"As Open as Possible, as Closed as Necessary": Balancing Community Needs, Sustainability, and Access in Transkribus

This poster examines how READ-COOP, the European Cooperative Society behind Transkribus, navigates the tension between openness and institutional sustainability in an era of predatory AI data scraping. Drawing on the principle of being "as open as possible, as closed as necessary," it argues that selective closure, democratic governance, and broad accessibility mechanisms are not opposites but strategically calibrated instruments for responsible platform development. The case of READ-COOP suggests that the Digital Humanities community may need to fundamentally reframe its expectations around openness — not abandoning the value, but rethinking what it can realistically mean under current conditions.