MCN 2010, October 28, 2010 Jeff Sedlik, President of PLUS

Alan Newman, Board Member, PLUS Coalition

Fundamental Principle.

•  Images must be more easily:

•  Accessible

•  Usable

• Manageable

•  Source should be identified

•  Licensing terms unambiguous

Who is PLUS?

•  Creators: photographers, illustrators.

•  Distributors: stock agencies

•  Users: book publishers, newspaper publishers, magazine publishers, web publishers, motion picture/TV, ad agencies, designers, the public.

•  Cultural Heritage: Museums, libraries, researchers, educational institutions

•  Other: software developers, attorneys, picture researchers, artist reps, manufacturers, standards bodies, etc.

PLUS Coalition

•  A collaboration between all communities engaged in creating, distributing, using and preserving images.

•  Mission: “Simplify the communication and management of image rights”

•  Non-profit, neutral, apolitical, global.

PLUS Coalition – Our Work

•  Global standards for expressing image rights.

•  A Registry identifying artists, rights holders, archives, and image metadata.

•  PLUS-IDs: Unique identifiers for every artist, rights holder, archive, license, and image.

•  Education.

PLUS Standards

•  Define and categorize image rights metadata. •  Glossary, License Schema, Media

Matrix, Unique Identifiers, Rights Packages

•  Multilingual codes support global use.

•  Facilitate access and understanding.

•  Support increased automation.

•  A free resource.

The PLUS Registry

•  Non-profit, industry-neutral “hub” connecting all registries, worldwide.

•  Repository for metadata identifying:

•  Rights holders, archives, images, rights info

•  Persistent unique identifiers.

•  Multilingual user interface

•  API access lets other applications connect for submission and search.

Registry: Individuals & Organizations

•  Instantly identify and contact any creator, rights holder or archive, anywhere in the world.

•  Free registration.

•  Search by name or by unique “PLUS-ID”

•  Forensic search features: old contact info, aliases, misspellings, © registrations, publications, subject matter.

•  Alternative contacts and heirs •  Mitigates orphan works issues.

PLUS Registry - Images

•  Access to rights and descriptive metadata for any image.

•  Common metadata schemas supported. •  Determine rights holder, archive name and

other critical info for any image.

•  Search by PLUS Image-ID. •  Search by image recognition.

•  Allows metadata to be added to images previously distributed.

•  Mitigates orphan works issues.

The PLUS Registry

PLUS Registry – License Info

•  Access to rights metadata for:

•  Any image

•  Any license

•  Manual or Automated Registration.

•  Update/Revise at any time.

Populating the Registry in “Phases”

1.  Beta release now

2.  Soon open for public registration

3.  Invite image registration

4.  Invite license registration

5.  Provide API for DAM systems, licensing platforms and other applications.

Cultural Heritage Working Group

•  Mission: Maximize benefit to museums, libraries, research institutions and the public.

•  Participants: All are welcome. •  Founding participants are:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Museum, Israel Museum, National Gallery of Art, Boston MFA

•  Email info@useplus.org

Mission of Cultural Heritage Group

•  Preservation: Robust, persistent, easily accessible rights metadata.

•  Access: Works are more easily accessible and usable.

•  Rights & attribution metadata communicated in universal format.

•  Reduced liability when sharing/offering/distributing images to public & other institutions

Institutions Can More Easily

•  Identify public domain & openly distributable images.

•  Manage image rights.

•  Provide info to the public.

•  Obtain licensed images.

•  Collaborate internationally.

•  Resolve orphan works instances.

The Work of the Working Group

•  Suggest rights metadata use cases

•  Suggest revisions to PLUS standards to maximize benefit to museums.

•  Establish cultural heritage metadata profiles for the Registry

Thank You.

•  Please participate in the PLUS Cultural Heritage Working Group. Listserve to launch in near future.

•  For more on PLUS, visit:

•  www.usePLUS.org

•  Questions or Suggestions:

•  info@usePLUS.org