Hi again everyone,

I agree that it is common for museums to restrict publication of
photos, but I don’t think it is fair to say that this is the norm.  I
would instead divide museums into two categories.

The first category consists of institutions that view their mission as
generating unambiguous factual knowledge through the consensus of
experts.  Authority and gatekeeping is very important to these
institutions.  Controlling how collections are perceived is part of
that mission.  Denying access to collections and heavily restricting
the ability to publish photos to specific professional venues (e.g.
academic books and journals) is a key strategy for these museums.

The second category consists of institutions that view their mission
as facilitating democratic engagement and debate through interactions
with the public at large.  Access to information about and
participation in ongoing reinterpretation of collections is very
important to these institutions.  Facilitating multiple perspectives
is part of that mission.  Enabling access to collections and
encouraging that debate to continue outside the walls of the galleries
through the publication of photos in contexts that are sometimes
professional and other times informal (facebook) is a key strategy for
these museums.

Obviously this is somewhat of a false dichotomy.  Many museums fall
somewhere in the middle.  Others are internally divided.  My point is
simply that restricting publication of photos is only one option being
taken today, and that enabling versus restricting access to
photography is an issue tied to institutional mission.

It is entirely possible that the volunteer discussed in this thread
views herself as having done nothing wrong.  She may simply have an
erroneous understanding of the museum’s mission.  As someone who is
personally invested in the success of the institution by volunteering,
she may even view herself as actualizing a mission to publicly share
information about and debate the significance of the museum’s
collection.

I suspect that she is not trying to do anything clandestine, as her
behavior is blatantly transparent to the museum staff.  After all, she
is trying to publish her ideas in a journal associated with the
museum.  That said, since I have no insight into the subtleties of
this situation I could be entirely wrong about her intents.

All the best,

Travis


On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Candace Perry
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have a difficult issue with a complicated volunteer situation.  We have an
> individual who volunteers here as a cataloger and researcher. This person
> also does personal research in our collections, but there have been times
> when the personal research and the volunteer work overlapped. She also
> volunteers for another local organization.
>
> During her time here she has taken many digital photographs, which I and my
> colleague in the archives have permitted, in part believing (which now is
> apparently wrong) that this was part of her volunteering. For awhile now I
> have been seeing her use images from our collections which she then attaches
> the copyright symbol and her name to, which I understand in theory, but am a
> bit – well, frankly annoyed – because she did not discuss this with anyone
> here. And I don’t know whether this automatically gives her free rein to use
> our images. They aren’t anything all that great – some of them have actually
> been pretty bad, image wise.
>
> Furthermore, she submitted an article for the journal that is associated
> with our organization – not our journal, but with the church with which we
> are affiliated – and has put her copyright info on that also, although it is
> a church publication. The article has to be proofread and edited, and there
> are several actual typos and some other problems. Her copyright info is also
> on the images in the article, not just ours but those of the  other
> organization she is working with.
>
> I becoming increasingly concerned about this, and now I need some
> professional help – in more ways than one!  She is a bit of a difficult sort
> – I won’t go into that – and I am very reluctant to start conversations with
> her as I either get too many apologies or defensiveness. Neither is fun.
>
> Any suggestions? Thanks!
>
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-- 
--------------------------------------
Travis Nygard
[log in to unmask]
www.travisnygard.com

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