Hello Museum folks,

I have a question or two for the group, which I hope will raise some
discussion, and for which I would very much appreciate any kind of
information.

Our museum has been approached recently on two occasions by commercial
interests wanting to use our museum content in their products. In the first
instance, a CD-ROM publisher wants to use images of one or two of our
paintings in their CD-ROM - mostly as a "sideshow", not the main focus. We
have a copy of the MUSE and AAM Museum and CD-ROM Developer sample contract
- it is a very useful template, but our lingering question is one of
pricing. Of course we have a price structure in place for charging print
publishers for use of images of objects in our collection, but none in
place for digital publishers. Is there any study, group of museums, or
single museum that has devised a fee structure for digital publishers? Are
you just using the same charges as for print media? To my mind they are
different types and scales of commerce, and the fee structure should be
looked at again, but I'd like to know anything about what other museums are
doing. Specific price structures would be great :)

In the other instance, a certain computer magazine wants to publish our WWW
site, along with other content I assume, on CD-ROM (yes, indeed!) and
distribute it with their magazine. The reason for this is to give people
without internet connectivity, or too slow a connection, speedy access to a
"good" :) and media-rich WWW site. Links would be provided for accessing
timely info, and other purposes, in case the person did have 'net access.
They do not propose to pay for this, but say that the exposure would be our
main benefit - which may be true... I'm not sure at this point (about
publishing net content on CD-ROM either, it seems it would have to be
altered quite a bit, which could mean watered-down if not enough effort was
put into it, by just removing live links). One compromise I have considered
is offering to publish only one section of our WWW site, one we would not
have to gain outside copyrights for, and which could be an engaging
resource in itself, but would not try to reproduce an entire WWW site
experience in another medium. Again my question to you all is; do you know
of any other similar project or proposal? Any studies or conference talks
that might relate?

The former is a more traditional request, the latter is sort of
unprecedented; asking to take digital content we have created and
re-publish it - with value added? Obviously, the whole issue of copyright
and intellectual property will be debated for a long while, but meanwhile
we are being approached increasingly by digital pubishers now. We want to
help ourselves and them when possible, but have little to go on. We don't
want to charge so little that these new media publishers come to find that
museums are a rich, cheap source of content to plunder, getting us into a
position it would be hard to get out of. Nor do we want to be so absolutely
worried or slow that we miss out of being part of the Information Economy
(which ties into a lot of other issues). I'm also aware of efforts to creat
digital content and rights clearinghouses. Do we need to price for
competition with them? Or consider joining one; or starting one for
museums? Also, these are for commercial interests right now - we will have
to deal with non-commercial licensing of content too; but I think the
Getty's Museum Educational Site Licensing project will help define that
field better. Is there a similar study for the commercial field? With
specific details and/or recommended price structures? Your thoughts and
references are appreciated. Thank you,



Richard Rinehart              | University Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive
Systems Manager & Education   | University of California at Berkeley
Technology Specialist         | 2625 Durant, Berkeley, CA 94720-2250
[log in to unmask] | http://www.uampfa.berkeley.edu/