The #Preserve Africa Archives Industry Programme hosted an online forum on Thursday, February 10th, with a panel of industry role players to discuss “Archives Access And Exploitation: Dealing With Rights And IP Restrictions.”
The forum’s goal was to assist with the best possible measures to manage collection access, monetisation, and IP rights in the digital era.
Ms Shubha Chaudhuri, Associate Director General at the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology, was one of the panellists at the one-day forum. She jump-started the discussion by sharing her thoughts on archives, access, and exploitation with the panel and participants.
She emphasised how digitisation and the internet had flung access in unexpected directions. “You cannot have access that will come in the way of preservation,” she continued, adding that “access no longer means walk-in access owing to digital platforms.” There is a distinction to be made between access and dissemination, or access and publication, in which you are now pushing material out to be used in more and various ways.”
“Access is to be open to being used, both in terms of what you make available and how you make it available.”
“Now, when we make things available on the internet, we have to think about who has the right, or rather, what the rules are that the person who deposited the material said regarding access,” she concluded.
To watch Ms Shubha Chaudhuri’s video snippet answering BMA’s posed question, ‘Please tell us what archives, access and exploitation are to you?’, CLICK/TAP HERE!
