Our copyright priorities throughout 2020-2025

From 2020 onwards, while safeguarding the core components of the activities that have made Europeana an important agent of change over the past decade, the Europeana Strategy 2020-2025 sees Europeana focus on a single task: supporting the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural heritage sector.

Both aligning with and contributing to this task, a new Europeana Copyright Strategy sets out guiding principles for Europeana’s copyright work throughout 2020 to 2025. Our vision for copyright is to empower the cultural heritage sector in Europe to deal with the topic, contribute to accessible and reusable digital cultural heritage, and fully make use of the benefits of digital transformation. We will achieve this through supporting  cultural heritage institutions in Europe to adopt best practices, including unified approaches and standards and encouraging the adoption of adequate policies for the sector and in the sector.

Our priorities

Over the previous months and years, we have been exploring the environment we operate in to gain a better understanding of the needs of the cultural heritage sector when it comes to copyright (see our short report into the state of play of copyright knowledge in cultural heritage institutions). Throughout 2020-2025, we will focus on three priorities for copyright: 

1. Follow evolving policy frameworks and practices

2. Reach a higher quality of rights information 

3. Build copyright capacity

From now to 2025 we will be working towards these priorities, which are fully set out in our strategy. We hope that this will offer transparency, a reference for those willing to contribute to these objectives, and that it will facilitate engagement with like-minded institutions.