0.5 Approaches to distribution of fee-free images: case studies  (Page 7/13)

Metropolitan museum of art conclusion

Initially, IAP was only available to scholars and curators at institutions that license ARTstor, but after several months itwas extended to any scholar who contacts either ARTstor or the Image Library at the Metropolitan to obtain a password to access IAP images. As of September2008, approximately 5,600 images had been contributed to IAP by the Metropolitan Museum. Although this process is under review, the current plan results inadditional deliveries of one thousand to two thousand images every four months. The Metropolitan’s Image Library staff monitor the ARTstor-generated usagereports that contain the raw information about users and intended uses. In Spring 2009 Bryn Mawr College contributed 3,900 images of Classical and Near Eastern archaeology to ARTstor to be available for scholarly publishing through Images for Academic Publishing: (External Link) .

During the first year of service, 645 images were downloaded from IAP for scholarly publications. Staff members note that thebenefits of working with ARTstor include:

• Free Distribution of Museum Images : There is no charge to museums for contributing images for distribution in the ARTstor Digital Library and Images for AcademicPublishing.

• Staff Efficiencies: There is a reduction in the time Metropolitan Museum staff members spend fillingorders for scholarly publication.

• Improved Service to Scholars: Scholars can select and immediately download images free of reproduction charges.

Victoria&Albert museum: delivering images through the museum’s website

[NOTE: This section is based on a September 15, 2008, telephone interview with Ian Blatchford, Deputy Director, and emailexchanges with Alan Seal, Head of Records and Collections Services, Victoria&Albert Museum.]

Building the infrastructure

The task of implementing electronic recordkeeping at the Victoria&Albert Museum (V&A) for its collections, numbering nearly 4.6 million objects, represents ongoing work that began morethan two decades ago. By the late 1990s, three systems were in place: the Collections Information System (CIS) for inventory control, cataloging, andaccessioning museum objects; the Photo Cataloguing System for information about analog and digital photographs of objects, books, events, gallery installations,and staff; and the Image Arena, in which medium-resolution images were stored and made accessible to the other two systems. All three resources were used toextract the data and images that originally fed the collections area of the V&A website. By 2005, the museum began investigating digital asset management systems (DAMS) to replace the Photo Cataloguing system, andultimately implemented their DAMS, called Vadar (V&A Digital Asset Repository), during 2006. A storage area network, also brought online in 2006,greatly increased storage capacity and now allows the museum to access the high- resolution master images online rather than offline from an ever-expandingcollection of CD-ROMs. Since putting the masters onto their storage area network, they no longer save copies on CD-ROM, even for archival purposes. Aback-up routine of the online files is in place both for recovery in the event of disk failure and for business continuity.