Open Knowledge in Wikipedia and Beyond: Possibilities and Responsibilities

In this course, we will work on the definition of Open Knowledge and its commonalities, differences and relationship to Open Access and Open Data. We look through non-profit projects of Wikimedia and through other academic and non-academic projects, by focusing on technological, collaborative, legal and ethical questions.

Whereas legal and technological restrictions, and collaborative methods are mostly well defined by laws, user guidelines and the current state of the art, social restrictions often seem to be open to interpretation. We will find and discuss guidelines to let ethical questions find access into the guidelines of Open Access projects. There will also be room to discuss your own Open Knowledge projects, based on what we learnt, if you want to share them with the class. This course is aimed at students, academic stuff, non-academic and academic archivists and librarians, community members and anyone else with an interest in ethical, legal, collaborative and technological questions about Open Knowledge.