Hi
This is a very interesting debate as many museums are currently considering
opening up their collections for reuse, and I agree that reuse of images and
commercial exploitation of images are not mutually exclusive, actually the
reverse. This would be a great topic for a seminar maybe?
In terms of motivations for image licensing, I would say that there are many
reasons other than just pure income generation. These include building new
audiences, cost recovery etc. Simon Tanner's excellent report funded by the
Mellon and reviewing the practices of US-based museum picture libraries is
still highly relevant
http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/USMuseum_SimonTanner.pdf
Naomi
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
REYNOLDS, Trevor
Sent: 11 March 2011 12:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The "revenue from free" question
Is "full economic costing of preparing and delivering content for commercial
uses" always what it's about? I have no idea whether our picture library
covers all its costs from income. What I do know is that we use them a lot
to do internal work, we would still need someone to do that work and if we
can get some income to offset some of those costs then that is a good thing
(surely).
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick
Poole
Sent: 11 March 2011 11:19
To: REYNOLDS, Trevor
Subject: Re: The "revenue from free" question
Hi Mike,
Thanks for this. The project that Mike refers to is a piece of research
which the Collections Trust has been doing with Curtis & Cartwright and
Ithaka on behalf of the European Commission to review the different types of
re-use of Public Sector Information.
Public Sector Information is broadly defined as 'your digital stuff' and the
outcomes of the project will inform the Commission's decision on whether or
not to retain the exemption for Museums & Libraries under the PSI Directive,
which is currently under review.
In broad terms, what we have been trying to do is identify and characterise
instances where cultural institutions have re-used their digital content for
both commercial and non-commercial purposes. What has been interesting is
that we have found it very hard to identify any instances where a cultural
institution is generating a stable, repeatable surplus on this trading
activity of a sufficient magnitude to justify the effort involved.
It is my conjecture - and I should emphasise that it is only a conjecture at
the moment - that when you undertake a full economic costing of preparing
and delivering content for commercial uses, the return on that investment is
marginal. Further, when you offset this return against the potentially far
higher return of the distributed re-use of open cultural datasets, it seems
to us that we are not reaching the full potential benefit of significantly
increased mindshare among mainstream audiences in the name of protecting an
economically unsustainable income line on the balance sheet.
The other part of this conjecture is that the economics of running a picture
library in a National Museum - where you can to an extent presume certain
background costs such as accommodation or access to legal advice - are
totally different from those of running one in a smaller museum. This was
essentially the topic of my keynote at yesterday's Bits to Blogs event,
which you can read on the OpenCulture blog at
http://openculture.collectionstrustblogs.org.uk.
This debate has been rumbling for ages - open it up and you risk losing
control, but the potential rewards in terms of new audiences are huge.
Lock it down and you might generate income from it, but the experience of
commercial picture libraries suggests you will struggle. Personally, I would
love the debate to move on to the idea that a smart museum can do both, and
everything in between, by taking an informed and strategic approach to
licensing and risk management. The problem is that the evidence base in
favour of either is threadbare at best.
Mike suggested a one-day event, at which the broadcasters, picture
libraries, publishers, museums, Wikipedians, galleries and other creative
industries came together to debate the idea of a balanced economy which
reconciled the interests of commercial vs. open. My concern is that I think
museums rather like having their cake and eating it, in the sense that we
want to be open and public-realm when it suits us yet retain the ability to
commercialise when we can. This is why the Collections Trust has stepped
back from engaging in the Copyright discourse - because it became apparent
that as a sector we are deeply conflicted in how we want to handle the issue
of rights.
I would really love to hear thoughts about whether this is a debate worth
pursuing, and how people are thinking about it at the moment!
All best,
Nick
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
Collections Trust
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Tel: 0207 250 8340
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The Custard Factory, Birmingham, 7th & 8th June 2011 Register online at
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Mike Ellis
Sent: 11 March 2011 10:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The "revenue from free" question
At the (very excellent) Bits 2 Blogs conference yesterday, someone - I
failed to get her name - claimed that picture library revenues for a
certain institution dropped hugely "as a consequence of them putting
their images on Flickr Commons".
This conversation happened in the context of the "what about free /
open?" debate which seems to have been rumbling on for a long time,
presumably because this is A Hard Question To Answer.
On the other hand, the lady in question seemed to be able to state
fairly unequivocally that revenues are downwardly affected by "free",
which sort of implies that research of some kind is being done.
We've had some interesting conversations on-list about this, but never
seem to really move the conversation forward - Nick Poole mentioned some
research that the Collections Trust are doing (Nick, if you're there,
give us the lowdown...!) - but I wondered how we might enable a frank,
open discussion about the culture of "free and open" and how this
affects (either upwards or downwards) our existing sources of revenue?
Mike
Mike Ellis
Research & Innovation Group
eduserv
t: 01225 470522
m: 07017 031 522
twitter: @m1ke_ellis
calendar: http://mikeellis.youcanbook.me
www.eduserv.org.uk
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