As of today, Paris Musées offers more than 100,000 digital reproductions of works from the collections of the museums of the City of Paris in Open Content (free and unrestricted access) in high definition.
A new step in the development of Paris Musées’ digital policy, the launch of Open Content contributes to increasing and improving the distribution of collections and reinforces actions in favour of better access to art and culture. It also helps to increase the visibility of works and knowledge of municipal collections in France and abroad.
This opening up of data guarantees free access and reuse of digital files by all, without technical, legal or financial restrictions, for commercial or non-commercial use.
Images representing works belonging to the public domain under CCØ (Creative Commons Zero) licence are made available to all Internet users via the Paris Musées collections portal. Initially, the reproductions of 2D works that are not subject to rights are available in Open Content, the images subject to rights remain in low definition in order to illustrate the sheets on the collections website. Art lovers will be able, for example, to download the works of the great names in photography (Atget, Blancard, Marville, Carjat…) or painting (Courbet, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Van Dyck…).
First French institution
This open access policy is accompanied by a process of promotion, mediation and awareness raising to guide Internet users. Indeed, each user retrieves a folder containing the image in high definition (300 dpi – 3,000 pixels), a file with the notice of the work and a charter of good practices related to images under CCØ license in order to invite everyone to cite the source and information on the work.
While this license is already used by international museums such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam or the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Paris Musées is the first French institution in Paris to take advantage of it by offering a considerable number of reproductions in high definition.
Paris Musées will enable everyone to use high definition images simply, sustainably, free of charge and instantaneously to support their research and improve their physical and digital mediation tools.
Reproductions of the works concerned will also be integrated into virtual exhibitions and accompanied by mediation providing users with a maximum of information.