Workshop

Open Access in and for Museums

29 June 2026, 1-5 pm
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

A joint workshop of the European University Viadrina, the Kleist Museum Foundation Frankfurt (Oder) and the Networking and Competence Centre on the topic of Open Access for publications and exhibition materials from museums will take place on 29 June 2026 from 1pm to 5pm. The venue is the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Based on several use cases, we want to explore cooperative approaches to Open Access and Open Culture at the interface of cultural institutions, universities and Open Access publication support infrastructures and work on a conceptual framework for possible solutions.

The event is aimed at professionals working in these fields.
Participation is free of charge. However, the number of places is limited.

Registration is possible via this form → Registration form
Up-to-date information can be found → here.
If you have any questions about the event, please contact Ben Kaden (ben.kaden@fh-potsdam.de).

 

Programme

(as of 25/02/2026)

   Welcome
   Introduction: Open Access meets Open Culture
   Open Access infrastructures at the Europa-Universität
   Four use cases
   Making availabe out-of-print publications from museums in Open Access
   Open Access for research publications from museums
   Open Access for exhibition documentation
   Open Access, ephemera and non-textual content
   Group work
   Planning open access in museums
   Infrastructure and cooperation between museums and university libraries
   Final discussion

Background

Open access support programmes have so far often focused on academic publishing within research communities and on the usual forms of publication such as journal articles, monographs and collective works. For these scenarios, numerous services are also offered and continuously developed across the state of Brandenburg and at the universities. In contrast, there are hardly any comprehensive open access solutions for publication activities in cultural institutions. As a result, the visibility and availability of the publication output of important cultural and research institutions remains limited.

This is regrettable, as the activities often have broad relevance and the associated potential for the effectiveness and subsequent use of the content as well as the visibility and impact of the institutions, work and research behind them are not fully utilised. The retrospective Open Access provision of such publications offers an opportunity to compensate for this. The key desiderata are the necessary infrastructure and, in some cases, the expertise. Cooperation with university libraries can prove to be key here. This is because they now have decades of experience with open access publishing. In the workshop, we would therefore like to bring together stakeholders from cultural institutions with people from university-related Open Access and ask in what form and under what conditions cooperation to strengthen open access between cultural institutions and university libraries makes sense and is possible?

 

Leading question:

How can publications from cultural institutions be made permanently accessible under open access conditions and digitally better than before?

The three main objectives of the event are:

(1) to explore the possibilities of cooperation between Open Access and culture or Open Culture;
(2) the identification of possible concrete follow-up steps for the Frankfurt (Oder)-Słubice setting on the basis of use cases from the Kleist Museum;
(3) the derivation of overarching in-depth possibilities for the development of solutions for Open Access-related cooperation between universities and museums in Brandenburg.