Earlier in this month Wikimedia Community Ireland’s Community Manager, Amy, travelled to Amsterdam to attend an event hosted at the Internet Archive Europe headquarters – a gathering of cultural heritage professionals, open knowledge advocates, and policymakers convened to discuss the future of Open Heritage in Europe and beyond.
The event formed part of WCI’s ongoing engagement with the Open Heritage Coalition (formerly known as TAROCH: Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage, which you can read about in this previous blog post), a global initiative convened by Creative Commons that is working towards an international UNESCO framework for equitable access to public domain heritage. WCI is proud to be part of this growing coalition, which now unites over 70 organisations across 25 countries.
Successes and Challenges of Open Heritage in the Netherlands
The first panel took a close look at the Dutch experience of open heritage, moderated by Beverley Francis of Creative Commons. Panellists included Amanda van Rik from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Saskia Scheltjens of the Rijksmuseum; Marike van Roon of Wikimedia Netherlands; and Edwin van Huis, who brought a broader perspective on the European digital heritage landscape.
The Dutch Ministry has two core strategic priorities in this space: increasing the online presence of offline heritage, and building a network of heritage institutions grounded in general web standards. The practical challenges of web harvesting and interoperability were recurring themes.
Marike van Roon of Wikimedia NL offered a grounding reminder on the importance of having access to open sources: “Wikipedians need open information.” She noted a growing hesitance around donations and collaborations, reflecting a broader tension in the open knowledge ecosystem between idealism and institutional reality, something that the Open Heritage Statement seeks to address.
Perhaps the most compelling voice on what openness can achieve in practice was Saskia Scheltjens of the Rijksmuseum, who reflected on the institution’s journey to making its collections freely available. Rather than reducing visitor numbers (a fear often cited by institutions reluctant to digitise openly) the Rijksmuseum found that “opening the collections helped to connect more people with art, and history.” And yet Scheltjens was clear that openness is not a silver bullet: the reality, she noted, demands nuance. “Open when possible, closed when necessary” and guided by FAIR data principles and a recognition of openness as part of democratic participation.
Edwin van Huis offered a timeline for perspective, noting that the Netherlands was a leader in digital openness and digitisation at the turn of the century and Millenium. He also highlighted the importance of European funding structures (particularly Horizon Europe) in supporting Open Science and academic infrastructure, and the particular challenge of making digitised collections accessible across different domains.
A question that resonated strongly: is Dutch success in this area a product of specific cultural and geographic conditions – the proximity of major institutions, a tradition of cooperation – or is it replicable elsewhere? The panel was divided but constructive on this point.
The discussion also touched on the AI moment as a potential catalyst for change. Scheltjens put it clearly: “The feeling of a sense of urgency has never been so strong, which is an opportunity.”
Questions from the floor raised the situation of small heritage associations and regional bodies that rely on volunteers, who may feel a strong sense of ownership over their collections and be reluctant or uncertain about opening them up. This is a challenge may be familiar to many working in the Irish heritage context.
International Perspectives on Open Heritage
The second panel widened the lens to take a global view, moderated by Maarten Zeinstra of Open Nederland. It brought together Douglas McCarthy of the Open Future Foundation, Claire McGuire of IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations), Jan Bas of UNESCO’s Memory of the World International Advisory Committee, and Beatrice Murch of Internet Archive Europe, whose Our Future Memory project focuses on digital rights.
Douglas McCarthy presented findings from the Open GLAM Survey, an international study of open access practices across cultural heritage institutions. While over 1,000 institutions around the world now qualify as “open” by the metric of providing some form of open access to collections, McCarthy was careful to note that the how matters as much as the why. He pointed to a concerning gap between policy and practice in many countries – even where EU and national law are structured to support the public domain, compliance regimes are weak and accountability is unclear.
Claire McGuire drew parallels with the Open Science movement, arguing that a shared international framework (as UNESCO has developed for open science and open educational resources) could offer a common language and set of standards for institutions navigating this space. She emphasised the need to translate principles into operational practice at the institutional level, and highlighted the particular importance of communities of origin frameworks – recognising that communities have rights in relation to their heritage that must be practically, not just rhetorically, implemented.
Jan Bas of UNESCO Memory of the World reminded attendees that “documentary heritage” is an expansive concept – encompassing books, letters, maps, film, digital materials, and even social media – and that UNESCO’s frameworks seek to support access to all of these “without hindrance.”
The question of how bottom-up advocacy connects with top-down policy was a live tension throughout the panel. Marike van Roon’s earlier point (that meaningful change has to come from the community) was echoed, but complicated by the reality that advocacy for a UNESCO recommendation is, by nature, a bureaucratic and diplomatic process. How do grassroots values survive that translation?
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, addressing the audience
Closing Reflections from Brewster Kahle
The event was brought to a close by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, who spoke with characteristic passion about the urgency of the current information moment. He focused on the need to ensure access to information that is verified, reliable, and true – not just open in a technical sense, but trustworthy in a way that equips people to navigate an era of disinformation and eroding information literacy. It was a reminder that open heritage is not an abstract policy goal; it is inseparable from the broader question of what kind of information ecosystem we want to live in.
The formal sessions were followed by a networking reception- a traditional Dutch Borrel – where Amy had the opportunity to connect with Wikimedians from the Netherlands and a wide range of professionals working across open heritage, open culture, and digital memory in Europe.
Refuelling the open knowledge conversation, Amsterdam-style 🧀 A traditional Dutch borrel to close out the evening.
A City That Takes Heritage Seriously
It would be remiss not to mention that Amsterdam itself provided something of a living argument for everything discussed at the event. The Netherlands is said to have more museums per square kilometre than any other country in the world Damrak – a fact that feels entirely plausible the moment you start walking the city’s streets.
Amy had the chance to visit NEMO Science Museum, the striking green-roofed building that juts out over the IJ waterfront and makes science genuinely accessible to visitors of all ages. She also visited the Mokkum exhibition, a fascinating exploration of Amsterdam’s rich Yiddish language heritage and the Jewish community that shaped so much of the city’s cultural identity. And perhaps most resonant for WCI, a visit to the OBA – the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam – which is home to Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ archive, a remarkable collection that sits within a public library and speaks directly to the kind of radical, open, community-centred approach to heritage that the event’s panels had been advocating for.
It’s hard not to reflect, visiting a city with this density of living cultural institutions, on what Ireland’s own heritage density might look like rendered so visibly. The island of Ireland contains over 152,000 recorded archaeological monuments – a staggering figure that represents one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe. Most of it is not behind glass. The challenge – and the opportunity – is making it as open and accessible as the monuments themselves are in the landscape.
What This Means for Ireland
Ireland has a rich and distinctive heritage landscape – and a growing community of people committed to ensuring that it is open, accessible, and genuinely representative of the communities whose stories it carries. WCI is exploring the possibility of convening a similar event in Ireland later this year, bringing together heritage professionals, open knowledge advocates, librarians, archivists, and cultural institutions to discuss what open heritage looks like in the Irish context – and what practical steps we can take together.
If you work in heritage, culture, libraries, or open knowledge in Ireland, or if you’re simply interested in these questions, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at info@wikimedia.ie to let us know you’re interested, and make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list to be the first to hear when plans take shape.
Wikimedia Community Ireland is a member of the Open Heritage Coalition. To read and sign the Open Heritage Statement, visit openheritagestatement.org.
