By Luanne Kanzawa,
Director, Japanese Friendship Garden
Overall the seminar was very
informative. One of the workshops in particular, the Image Licensing, provided
information regarding rights and reproductions and how museums utilize their
resources to contribute to their bottom line. Before entering the session, I
had no knowledge about image licensing. While these images can be important
contributions to providing access to the widest possible audience, I learned
that we could also generate income from the collection images.
Two prestigious universities gave a
presentation regarding image licensing. The Yale University has thousands of
images collection and provides access to 600 images of their collection for
educational use and scholarly research, publishing, advertising, and other
projects. These images generate $15,000 a year to help cover the costs for the
universities use of images and technical support for the faculties and staff.
The Harvard University has over 200 images and receives an annual income of
$6,000. The universities contract with Art Source, Scala and other agencies to
distribute the images to their clients.
A nonprofit Licensing organization
called PLUS Coalition gave a presentation about their services. The PLUS
Coalition engages in creating, using and preserving images. They provide an
integrated system of standards. The PLUS includes the following services: PLUS
Packs-book bundle, cover rights, all book publishers involved, PLUS License
Data Format-scheme for communicating licensing, copy rights, PLUS ID Code
System-identifying images, license transactions, finding the owner of the
images and PLUS Tools-generates license and approval standards.
There was a discussion on how
museums could monitor the use of images. Apparently, watermark is not an
effective tool. An organization called Digimark provides invisible watermarks
and identification on digital images. In addition, a hotmail link could be
installed on the image. When a user clicks the image it goes back to the
website. Other services such as the web spiders could locate images and find
the users.
The image licensing relates to the
BPOC digitization project because it discussed the process of archiving and
disseminating of digital resources. Digital archives offer the most effective
method for storage and dissemination of electronic data, and facilitate the
enhancement of educational programs. However, museums should take precautions when
archiving digital image files and providing access to the public. Users may
alter, modify or use images inappropriately.