Twitter is great for having real-time conversations - but I wish it were easier to gather in a group for such discussions...

Glad to see Mike Ellis's post on last night's discussion!

It had occurred to me only recently that not everyone has my experience of having to consider mid to long-term forward planning, including finances, in heritage. I started my career being involved in planning capital projects and working with quantity surveyors, marketing and trading staff. I've done a lot of work in the past to make it possible to monitor expenditure, income, planned expenditure - including records of historical spend/income and forward planning up to 10 years hence.

I'm not surprised that the NPG doesn't calculate the costs of its online picture selling but knows the income. It would probably take quite a lot of work to identify all the costs involved, and is probably not worth it as long as they're making income, since it's part of their necessary online presence. 

The priority would change if someone starts saying that museums should cut costs by not having websites or any online presence. Then trying to identify those costs might be worth it (remember, if you're doing that, you'd probably want to calculate the proportion of costs of the photography, the physical space required for photographers and for computer equipment, including servers, the proportion of the administrative, finance, picture library staff's time as well as any curator, conservator and porter time involved with preparing the image - and any ...then there are the depreciating values...
I certainly wouldn't want to administer the complex budget/cost code system one would need to keep track of it year after year.

I can't help but feel that time might be better spent looking at how well the images are described/keyworded on the database (I noted some years ago that there could be issues with this aspect, including things being described incorrectly occasionally).

Museums and other cultural institutions also need to try to think differently how to get income, and the best ways of using the assets they have (and the assets can include the people and their skills, of course, as well as the collections and buildings).
After an earlier discussion with Jim Richardson prompted by my reminding people on Twitter that museum & gallery shops can be good places to do some Christmas shopping, I spent some time browsing some online museum & gallery shops at the weekend. I was surprised that there wasn't more that made me wish I had lots of money to spend. Yes, I know the economics of the 'pocket money' mass-produced goods (and yes, I still wince at the design of many such goods - but I'm not a 9 year old excited at the prospect of spending the coins in my pocket).

Cultural institutions need fresh thinking on how to make some income without compromising on caring for and providing access and interpretation to our culture. I can see a lot more that they could do. I also think that we have to think beyond the American model that the politicians seem to cherish.

Janet

Janet E Davis

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