Emily Gore
Deputy University Librarian
University of Georgia
Melissa Levine
Director, University of Michigan Copyright Office
University of Michigan
Maarten Zeinstra
Chair
Open Netherlands Association
RightsStatements.org provides 12 standardized rights statements for online cultural heritage. Launched in 2015 and adopted by cultural heritage aggregators, including Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America, and Trove, along with numerous individual institutions, the statements have been translated into 13 different languages. At the aggregator level alone, over 40 million digital objects have rights statements as a part of their metadata. Designed for and by professionals in the cultural heritage community, its suite of rights statements consistently describes the legal status of collections in museums, libraries, and archives and makes it easy to see if and how online cultural heritage works can be reused.
Nearly 10 years ago, a governance structure of cultural heritage aggregators was established to oversee RightsStatements.org. The aggregators paid a small membership fee to assist with overhead for running the statements, and volunteer labor largely accounted for the rest of the support and development. However, during the global pandemic in 2020 and in the post-pandemic years, the consortia disbanded. Efforts are underway with an international interim steering group to provide some stability for the RightsStatements.org technical infrastructure and to engage with parties interested in helping steward and grow the Rights Statements community. In the session, three representatives from the interim steering group will give an overview of the widespread implementation and use of the statements, discuss current efforts to stabilize RightsStatements.org, and discuss needs and next steps to find a new organizational home.