[MassHistPres] Use of photographs in Commission Collections

[Lee Wright]

Good question about a topic of great interest, Judy.

Since our goal is historic preservation and generating a greater appreciation of the importance of preserving historic buildings and other structures and artifacts, its in our best interests to make it as easy as possible for people to get and use high-quality digital images, unencumbered by copyright restrictions, fees, or releases.

This is also the direction of society, especially young people who have grown up with a sharing and re-mix culture and who will continue that forward as a cohort.

A Creative Commons Share Alike license helps accomplish these objectives.  Details: http://creativecommons.org/choose/.

One common defense of the old way of approaching this is that we are "protecting" something.  This is, in my opinion, misplaced.  We're interested in protecting the structure or artifact, and shouldn't be concerned about the reproduction, including for commercial use, of the image or the "re-mixing" of the image.

Two related observations from the New England Museum Association conference last week in Newport:

- I spoke with someone at one of New England's most popular private historic sites.  He commented that they've tried to maintain the old policy of formal agreements, payment, and policing.  He wondered aloud, "If we added up all of the costs of administering this policy, they'd probably be greater than the small amount of money we make from the licensing."  Also not considered is the fact that, by limiting access and charging, they're reducing the number of times people see the images.  Aren't we interested in more people seeing these great historic buildings?

- The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC is moving boldly in this direction in a way that may initially seem surprising: They invited digital artists into their galleries to photograph and make 3-D models of statutes, including combining images from different statues.  This was all done under a Creative Commons share-alike license and the digital files, which allow anyone else to download and print our (or manipulate and print out) these models were all posted to the Thingiverse site and are available as free downloads.  A post by the speakers at the NEMA conference that discusses this before the event took place is here: http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/now-at-the-met/features/2012/hackathon.  Other articles and posts covered the event itself.

Good luck.  



Lee Wright  |  Marlborough  |   "Make this holiday historic!" - The campaign for historic sites and organizations at the holidays - http://www.thehistorylist.com/the-holiday-campaign-for-history

. . .



On Nov 19, 2013, at 4:07 PM, Judith Lund wrote:

> Dartmouth Historical Commission holds a number of photographs and negatives of buildings and street scenes, some dating back to the late 19th century.  Our town executive secretary has suggested that we adopt a formal policy for use of these photographs, both for town use and for personal use.  Having managed the photo collection at New Bedford Whaling Museum for a while in the past, I am familiar with copyright rules and with their use policy.  However, I am interested to learn how other commissions handle use of the photos like this that are the property of their towns.
> 
> Judy Lund
> CoChair, Dartmouth Historical commission
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