FALLS CHURCH, VA, April 1, 2026 — Digital Scholar (DS) is pleased to announce that it has assumed community leadership and organizational stewardship of RightsStatements.org. The statements provide a set of standardized copyright terms for libraries, archives, and museums to inform online visitors how and if their digital cultural heritage works may be reused.
As the organizational home for the initiative, DS will collaborate with the RightsStatements.org global user community to update and maintain these standards, ensuring responsiveness to evolving legal, technical, and operational contexts. DS will lead the development of a sustainable model to support the statements over the coming years.
The statements are available in 16 languages and implemented by major cultural institutions and aggregators worldwide, including Europeana, DPLA, and the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage, thus supporting international use and interoperability.
“RightsStatements.org is a critical piece of shared infrastructure for cultural heritage,” said Sharon M. Leon , Co-Chief Executive Officer of Digital Scholar. “Our goal is to build on the strong foundation created by the original developers and the broader community, while creating a sustainable, participatory model that will support the statements for the long term.” Leon, who will lead this project, also serves on the Local Contexts Council. Local Contexts is a global initiative that supports Indigenous communities in asserting cultural authority and data sovereignty through tools such as Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels and Notices.
"We selected Digital Scholar as the new organizational home for Rights Statements because of their experience in managing essential initiatives like Omeka and Zotero,” said Maarten Zeinstra member of the Interim Rights Statements Steering Committee. “We believe they have the expertise necessary to lead the initiative through its next chapter."
This transition follows the tireless work of the Steering Committee, which includes original developers of the Rights Statements vocabulary and its technical infrastructure. Committee members Greg Cram, Emily B. Gore, Melissa Levine, Maarten Zeinstra, Ariadna Matas, and Valentine Charles guided the project through a pivotal moment and worked collectively to identify a new organizational home. Their expertise and commitment have been instrumental in sustaining the project as it matures.
“We are deeply grateful to the Interim Steering Committee for their stewardship and vision,” said Sean Takats, co-chief Executive Director of Digital Scholar. “Their work ensured continuity for a globally relied-upon standard and made this transition possible. We look forward to continuing to work with them in this next phase of the initiative.”
Follow Digital Scholar for updates on this transition and our coming invitations to collaborate.
Digital Scholar
Digital Scholar is a nonprofit organization that sustains open-source tools and platforms for digital scholarship, publishing, and cultural heritage, including Omeka, Zotero, Tropy, PressForward, and Sourcery. Digital Scholar focuses on building strong communities and resilient business models around software that supports research, teaching, and public access to knowledge.
RightsStatements.org
RightsStatements.org provides a standardized set of rights statements designed for use by libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations worldwide. The statements support clear, consistent, and machine-readable communication of copyright and reuse status, enabling greater access, understanding, and reuse of digital cultural heritage materials.
Media Contact
Sheila A Brennan, Director of Institutional Relations, Digital Scholar sheila@digitalscholar.org https://digitalscholar.org