This is an interesting thread and I am reading it with great interest, as we are drafting our own collections policies, including database access and intellectual property statements. I think it will take a specialist in intellectual property to sort out the public access rights from the creation rights. Most museums are public or semi-public institutions (if you are receiving a tax break and any Federal funding, as I understand it, you can't consider yourself to be strictly private) and are affected to some degree by FOIA. Yet much of this information is sensitive and becoming more sensitive all the time. Specific site information, for example, has often been used for inappropriate access by collectors not affiliated with the museum. Or non-collectors, even, such as developers, an unpleasant situation we encountered when I was in Austin. Q: If the museum releases information that is used for inappropriate purposes and a landowner sues for damages, is the museum partially liable? (I have received many thoughtful but conflicting answers to that.) No, I have little use for the ivory tower mentality, myself. And I have seen information repressed for decades (or even lost because it was never shared and was mainly stored in the heads of curators who assumed that they were immortal). But I would suggest that we look calmly at what information should be shared and what should be protected, rather than saying that anyone has a right to anything. After all, we are in this field to provide stewardship of collections, including their associated information, not just open access on demand. Surely there is a balance somewhere between denying everyone and denying no one. Sally Shelton Director of Collections Care and Conservation San Diego Natural History Museum