The mass digitisation of cultural heritage is perceived as both beneficial and democratising due to improving public access through online collections. However, it poses various questions from the public’s inability to freely share and use digital objects to ownership of the information and rights to govern access. Moreover, the process of digitization itself must be questioned as a process which can reproduce inequitable systems of representation and control.

The research will investigate these questions through a human rights lens and provide the legal and practical background necessary to support new regulatory tools for more flexible, ethical and inclusive access.