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Hi Mike Well, at Aberdeen Maritime Museum we have put a lot of our ship plans, historic photographs and colour films online and they are totally open for anyone to download, 'steal', or enjoy in whatever way they want to. I have had experience of one guy wanting to buy a copy of one of our films and then his son downloaded it for him from the website, but we would only have charged him 10GBP or something for it anyway so it's not as though we would have really made any money on the deal once our time was taken into consideration it's probably saving us money and time. I would rather that people who are interested in what we have can visit our site again and again and tell their friends about what we have - to me it's in the spirit of what museums are for. I have actually had some great feedback and the openness of the website encourages users to contact me with their information and experiences of our ships which in turn adds to the usefulness of the website and the richness of the collections. In a few occasions people have donated items to the museum because of what they've seen on the website. So, in short, I agree with Mia - we gain more than we lose by sharing. Meredith P.S. How I wish I had been at Montreal for MW2008 - I was thinking of you all! Meredith Greiling Assistant Keeper of Maritime History Neighbourhood Services (Central Area) Aberdeen Maritime Museum Shiprow, Aberdeen AB11 5BY Tel: (01224) 337711 Visit http://www.aberdeenships.com or Aberdeen City Council's website at http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk Please do not print this email or any attachment unless absolutely necessary. >>> electronic museum <[log in to unmask]> 04/17/08 5:31 PM >>> All I think this is a really interesting thread. Understanding what value can be had from exposure is obviously key. There's lots of evidence out there that getting more eyeballs to your stuff (and accepting that some "stealing" will take place) is a much better business model than hiding your assets away and people simply not getting to it at all. The evidence often clusters around PDFs downloads: see http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/ where Paulo Coelho, author of "The Alchemist" says this: "In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. […] I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. […] So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho." With the demise of music DRM apparently on the horizon, it's a hot topic with the major music labels, too. Ian Rogers from Yahoo! wrote a fantastic post with slides entitled "Losers wish for scarcity. Winners leverage scale". I've written about this on my blog: http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2008/01/14/scarcity-vs-scale/ ... What would be fantastic (if unlikely) would be if a museum or gallery agreed to take part in a quantitative study: take one selection of images and hide them away behind watermarking, DRM and thumbnails; take another and make these widely and hugely available via Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, blogging, etc. Offer both sets for purchase in hi-res, then sit back and measure over a period of time. Common sense says that people will steal all the small ones and not bother buying: increasing bodies of evidence show the opposite is actually true. I'd personally argue that once stuff is on the web, it's being "stolen" anyway, so we can fight this or go with it and do what we can to encourage sales off the back of the "scale". But I don't run a picture library so I'm more than ready to put my neck on the line So. Any museums going to step up to the "make it free" challenge? :-) ta Mike ________________________________________________ electronic museum ..thoughts on museums, the social web, ie: [log in to unmask] On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Ridge, Mia <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Frankie Roberto wrote: > > > At the conference there did seem to be a vague consensus that we > > should be moving towards giving access to these images (the public > > domain ones at the very least) away though - especially with the > > general buzz around Flickr Commons. > > > > Does anyone have any thoughts about this? And what are the > > barriers we need to overcome? > > I think we gain more than we lose when we provide access to our images, > but then I'm an old hippie and open source geek. > > I think we need to show that it's going to benefit our audiences and our > institutions; and particularly that it's not going to lose money for our > institutions. > > I'd love to see the figures for total expenditure on commercial image > licensing and print services versus total income - do these services > currently make a profit, and would that profit be enhanced by increased > exposure and 'discoverability' or would that profit be dented if people > no longer feel the need to pay for images? Do our museums even know if > their image services are truly profitable, and if so does anyone want to > volunteer their data? > > Someone's just started a discussion on the MCN list (http://www.mcn.edu) > with the subject 'Monetizing museum web sites' and that thread might > also throw up some useful suggestions. > > cheers, Mia > > > Mia Ridge > Database Developer, Museum Systems Team > Museum of London Group > 46 Eagle Wharf Road > London. N1 7ED > Tel: 020 7410 2205 / 020 7814 5723 > Fax: 020 7600 1058 > Email: [log in to unmask] > www.museumoflondon.org.uk > Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while > they undergo a major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk to > find out more. > London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city we > see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning > Before printing, please think about the environment > > ************************************************** > For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the > website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk > ************************************************** > -- ************************************************** For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk ************************************************** _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "IMPORTANT NOTICE: This e-mail (including any attachment to it) is confidential, protected by copyright and may be privileged. The information contained in it should be used for its intended purposes only. 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