Abstract:  Deliverable 13.1 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13) outlines current practices guiding online digital image sharing by institutions charged with providing care and access to cultural memory, in order to identify how these practices may be adapted to promote and support the FAIR Principles for data sharing.

The report has been compiled by the Digital Repository of Ireland as a key information resource for developing the recommendations forthcoming in Deliverable 13.2. The DRI is Ireland’s national repository for the arts, humanities and social sciences. A Working Group of cultural heritage professionals has been invited to contribute feedback.

There are well-established standards and traditions driving the various approaches to image sharing in the sector, both local and global, which influence everything from the creation of digital image files, their intellectual organisation and level of description, to statements of rights governing use. Additionally, there are technological supports and infrastructures that have emerged to facilitate these practices which have significant investment and robust community support. These practices and technologies serve the existing communities of users well, primarily the needs of government, business and higher education, as well as the broader general public. Recommendations for adapting established collections delivery mechanisms to facilitate the use of cultural heritage images as research data would ideally not supersede or duplicate processes that also serve these other communities of users, and any solutions proposed in the context of the WorldFAIR Project must be made in respect of these wider contexts for image sharing.