Capture and the National Gallery of Ireland have worked together for several years, using the Capture platform to manage the National Gallery of Ireland Image Ordering System.  Recently, the National Gallery of Ireland introduced Creative Commons licensing for some of their content, making 1000 images available under an Open Data Initiative.

We spoke with Sean Mooney, Digital Media and Publishing, at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) to find out more:

What is a Creative Commons license and what can you do with it?

Creative Commons is a series of licenses that help make creative works more accessible and open to members of the public. The National Gallery of Ireland is currently offering 1,000 images from its collection under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0) which allows the user to share and redistribute the material in any medium or format and adapt, i.e. remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose including commercial use, as long as appropriate credit is given to the Gallery together with an indication of the changes made. The user cannot apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the licence permits.

What type of Creative Commons license did you choose and why?

We chose to make our content available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) as we felt it was the best fit for us in achieving our goal of making our content as open and accessible as possible. We feel that CC BY 4.0 is a good choice, as it only requires an attribution to be made to acknowledge the owner/creator of the content and enables members of the public to see that the images come from the National Gallery of Ireland collection.

What content is under Creative Commons? (Why this content in particular?)

The Images & Publications Team and the Gallery Curatorial team collaborated to carefully curate an initial selection of approximately 1,000 artworks from the collection. With the aim of offering significant representation from all of the different schools, periods and media, and a balance of renowned and lesser-known artworks.

Why is it important to make the Gallery’s content accessible through Creative Commons? (as well as through other license types?)

Access to the collection is key to the Gallery’s mission and core values. As physical space in our galleries is limited, the virtual space gives us the opportunity to allow greater visibility of our collection. Creative Commons offers us another platform on which to engage new audiences and encourage use of our collection in new and exciting ways. We hope to inspire users to become creative with Gallery art!

How important is having a seamless user experience for licensing content?

When making content available via a website, it is very important to make the user interactions quick, seamless and simple. When offering users the chance to create their own custom license the website needs to be incredibly intuitive and easy to understand. The smoother the experience, the more likely the user will return.

How was it working with the Capture team to launch this?

Working with the Capture team on this project was a great experience. Unfortunately, the project was just beginning to grow legs when the Covid-19 pandemic started. Through the first three or four months of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty, which resulted in some delays to the launch. Through virtual meetings with members of the Capture team, mostly from our homes, we were able to create a strong working relationship and pool our collective resources, knowledge and areas of expertise, to solve any problems that arose, and to create an intuitive and easy to use Creative Commons platform.

Take a look at National Gallery of Ireland Images here to start exploring the content available

Banner Image Credit: Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957) The Liffey Swim, 1923, Oil on canvas, 61 x 91 cm, NGI.941, © National Gallery of Ireland