Cultural institutions such as libraries, museums, and universities are gradually shifting to a new and radically collaborative model of information sharing. They are making vast amounts of information about the books, artifacts, and research within their walls available for reuse by anyone with a computer and a connection to the World Wide Web. This is “linked open data.” It has the potential to unleash a truly global research community, transforming the way research into history and culture is done and making possible new and more ambitiously collaborative kinds of project.

But with radical openness come important questions about privacy, ownership, and rights of access – questions that are understood differently in different cultures and contexts. Join us for a discussion of both the exciting potential and the profound challenges involved as our institutions of knowledge and learning become open to the world.

Corey Harper is the Metadata Services Librarian at New York University Libraries, where he works on integrated library system migration, and on the implementation and upkeep of a next-generation Enterprise Search System: Ex Libris's Primo. This experience has further convinced him of the need for more rigorous data modeling and the use of common web protocols to support metadata interoperability.

Eric Kansa is Director of the Open Context project, a web-based archaeological research data publication, which is based at the Alexandria Archive Institute. His research interests concern Web architecture, service design, and how these issues relate to the social and professional content of the digital humanities. He also researches policy issues relating to intellectual property, including text-mining and cultural property concerns.

Amy Rudersdorf is assistant director for content at the Digital Public Library of America, where she is responsible for digitization partnerships and related workflows, metadata normalization and shareability, and engagement to promote the DPLA as a community resource. While director of Digital Information Management Program for the State Library of North Carolina, she helped develop a number of digital preservation efforts for the state.