What are the barriers to open culture? What challenges do cultural heritage institutions — such as galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) — face in making their collections openly accessible online? How could Creative Commons support institutions in addressing these challenges and taking part in better sharing of cultural heritage?

In search of answers, we looked at past research, notably Andrea Wallace's Barriers to Open Access — Open GLAM, and asked more than 30 experts in the open culture movement. You can watch what they told us in our CC Open Culture VOICES vlog series. Here's a small sample of what we heard:

Let's Try This Again

Along The Way We Try

Along with 600 million people, nine-year-old Chris Hadfield is glued to his television—watching intently as American astronaut Neil Armstrong glides down the ladder of the Lunar Module, and in one swift pounce, touches the dust of a familiar yet alien world. His words forever immortalized, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

• Assemble module
• Launch aircraft
• Land safely

“To see that successfully carried out against what seemed like impossible odds for the first time in human history,” Hadfield recalled in 2012, “was hugely inspiring.” That moment sparked his lifelong journey to become an astronaut; which he did, becoming the first Canadian to walk in space in 2001. In the 1990s, Haley Harrison first heard Armstrong's words on an educational tape about space. “I was very young, probably 4 or 5 years old,” she recollected, “I just listened to the tape over and over. I would imagine myself on the shuttle…and I would pretend I was going up to space.” Harrison is now a Ph.D. candidate studying nanoscience at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with goals of working in the space industry.

NASA is not only required by law (e.g. the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976) to give the public access to many of its materials, the Agency really wants people to use them.

Footage and audio of the Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin hopping on the Moon's surface in 1969 have been remixed, remastered, and reshared countless times—inspiring generations of everyday citizens, like Hadfield and Harrison, to engage with space science and exploration. In fact, the use of materials created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to create new works for the public doesn't end with Armstrong's history-making first steps.

Steps to launch

1. Assemble module
2. Launch aircraft
3. Land safely

For example, Alex G. Orphanos, a science communicator, engineer, and host of the Today in Space podcast, has put NASA's materials to use for over six years. In particular, he has used images from the Hubble Space Telescope and information from NASA Procurement to better explain space-related issues to his audience. Rachael Eidson, a business development specialist for Trenton Systems and social media influencer also routinely uses NASA's images in her collaborations with eco-fashion and accessory companies. In fact, it's hard to miss the resurgence of space-themed items, including t-shirts, mugs, bags, etc. featuring NASA's “meatball” logo. As the L.A. Times reported in 2019, “The NASA logo is having a moment.”