Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change

Access to cultural goods is an essential prerequisite for exercising the human right to cultural participation (Art. 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Cultural goods relevant in this context include all artifacts that serve to convey information or to articulate and further develop a culture’s understanding of the world and itself: works of art, holdings of archives, collections and museums, publications of the results of scientific research, and the like.

The digital transformation has fundamentally changed the possibilities and conditions of access to cultural goods, and will continue to bring about new forms and practices of production, reproduction, and reception of such goods, as well as interaction with them: In the course of digitization, on the one hand, dynamic and potentially democratic forms of access to cultural goods, to museums, collections, archives, but also to immaterial goods are emerging that exist exclusively in cyberspace or can be accessed in new ways by means of digital technologies.

At the same time, new forms of access restriction are encroaching on the usage possibilities and usage rights of individuals and specific groups. Furthermore, digitality ties the production and reception of cultural goods to technological preconditions that can be characterized as second-order access conditions.

This gives rise to three key research questions (Research Programme) for the Centre for Advanced Study, which are addressed in an interdisciplinary approach based on 14 analytical perspectives (Main Research Topics).