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CKC’s New License Agreement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 29, 2024

Center for Knit and Crochet’s Crowdsourced Collection – soon to be renamed “CKC Community Collection” – is a crowdsourced digital collection of knitting and crochet designed to give makers greater agency over preserving their own histories and what they have made for future generations.  Right now, you can use CKC’s Crowdsourced Collection to freely preserve and share your own objects, your stories, and your craft expertise – in your own words, and on your own schedule.  

CKC believes that by exercising our agency as makers, and adding our own histories to CKC’s crowdsourced digital collection, we will all be better able to direct how the history of these crafts is documented and represented in museum collections, exhibitions, scholarship – and ultimately in public perception – for generations to come.

When Center for Knit and Crochet originally launched its Crowdsourced Collection in 2018, we chose to ask contributors (that’s you!) to make the items within the collections available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0). Since then, we’ve expanded the collection and deepened our own understanding of our stewardship of all CKC’s digital collections. Creative Commons licenses are best used by creators to allow others to use their work in unique and creative ways. As an institution, our role is to be good stewards of the work added to our collections, not license it for others to use. That role should always be with you, as a contributor and creator.

That’s why CKC’s Board of Directors has decided to introduce a new license agreement to better reflect CKC’s mission as an educational institution and provide more clarity for our contributors. You can view the new license agreement here. The original CC BY 3.0 license allowed CKC to host, share, and use any contribution to the Crowdsourced Collection, but because of the way the license was written, it also gave CKC (and others) the rights to use your works commercially. 

The new license agreement still gives CKC the ability to host your contributions in our digital collection and to share and use them broadly for non-commercial purposes – for example, on social media, in newsletters, and in other efforts to expand the collection and support CKC’s work to preserve and promote the art, craft, scholarship, and history of knitting and crochet – but we are no longer seeking commercial use, or determining how anyone other than CKC can use or share your contributions to CKC’s digital collection. The new agreement officially goes into effect October 1, 2024. We want to let you know now so you have time to review the new license. For more information about CKC’s digital collections, and how the new license will apply, please visit Licensing for CKC’s Digital Collections.

What’s changing:

  • As of October 1, 2024, CKC’s Crowdsourced Collection will be renamed the CKC Community Collection. 
  • As of October 1, 2024, all website references and webpages related to CKC’s Crowdsourced Collection website references and pages related to CKC’s Crowdsourced Collection will be updated with a link to our new license agreement, updated Terms and Conditions, and the new name. 
  • As of October 1, 2024 contributions you add to the CKC Community Collection will need to be added under this new license agreement.
    • The new license is not retroactive, so anything you contributed before October 1, 2024 remains available online under the previous CC BY 3.0 license.

What’s not changing:

  • You still need to set up an account, free of charge, to add to CKC’s digital collections.  You may set up a new account when you contribute to the collection.
  • If you’ve contributed before, you can log in and manage your contributions or recover a lost password.
  • You own the copyright to your objects and photographs.
    • If you’ve added a picture taken by someone else, please ask for permission from the original photographer to share it on our collections resource, and provide a credit to them.
  • You can always add or remove your objects at any time by logging in to your account or contacting us at [email protected]. 
  • You can always contact us with any questions or concerns by emailing us at [email protected].
  • We are committed to hosting and sharing a crowdsourced collection that enables makers and their families to document their work and their personal collections of knitting and crochet in their own words.  CKC’s Community Collection is a critical, open-access, free resource for preserving, sharing, and enjoying the history of knitting and crochet, educating the public about these crafts, and sharing the many individual expressions of craft knowledge and artistry.