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Since July 2010, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France has been delivering more than 1,400 book scans in the huge Wikimedia Commons archive.
Even without an official partnership, the Studio Harcourt, widely known for celebrities portraits and recognized by Roland Barthes among his Mythologies, has started to upload its material.
These are only the latest institutions that have chosen to distribute its assets without the restrictions of copyright.
The priceless collections of Bundesarchiv, the German Federal Archive, the Deutsche Fotothek and Tropenmuseum, further demonstrate a full understanding of the free sharing of knowledge.
Similarly, the Flickr Commons project no longer includes only North American universities and libraries.
Such initiatives not only offer a valuable contribution to the documentation of a global memory through some of the world’s most important websites, but also a free and immediate access to a boundless repository available to anyone engaging in media production.
Indeed, consultation is not intended to be straightforward even in Wikipedia: images from various archives are published by linking the different voices involved. Probably, some other “private” online collections (or better, without public domain license) have better indexes and navigation structures.
On the other hand, it is crucial that the images are available at high resolution and do not require re-use rights.
In Italy, but more generally in Europe where the tradition of public service should be more deeply rooted, there is a big delay due to different reasons:
First of all, a systematic digitization and cataloging of materials has not taken place everywhere, and even without suggesting that the presumption of special interests could have impeded the spread of a collective good, there is no doubt that poor coordination between actors and an equally small consideration for new ways of relating to citizenship are a serious handicap, which continue to weigh on our shoulders as a divide against the universal access to knowledge.
