Open Data – a business model perspective

"Today Europeana publishes its second White Paper, ‘The Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid: a Business Model perspective on Open Metadata’. The paper is the result of a roundtable that brought together leading figures in the cultural heritage sector. The experts examined the opportunities and risks associated with open licensing of their massive datasets, which comprise the record of all publications and cultural artefacts in Europe. The White Paper documents their findings and is published to meet a growing need among libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual collections for a new business model that weighs the current digital opportunities against traditional concerns about ownership and control. It makes specific recommendations to be addressed and concludes that “the benefits of open data sharing and open distribution... outweigh the risks”....The Data Exchange Agreement is the primary element in the Europeana Licensing Framework. The Framework is also published today, and establishes the co-ordinates of Europeana’s position on open data, the public domain, and users’ rights and responsibilities...."