encouraging access: reaching out and tracking back

Museums have often (perhaps wrongly) been concerned about the appropriation of images of works in their collection, and their use in  contexts that were not mediated by curatorial authority. Unfortunately, this overzealous protectionism has limited access to collections rather than enabled it, and has spawned a number of 'user-focused' collections of images that often work around museum rights and reproductions offices, rather than with them. As a result, museums are loosing touch with the audiences for digital reproductions of their collections.

Rather than defending collections from unscrupulous users, museums would be well-placed to encourage on-line access to a broad range of images and documentation (in text, image + multimedia). What better way to encourage a sense of public ownership of public collections than to make them available for the public to use? And what more public use than widely accessible on-line linking? Just as we moved onto the web to encourage new audiences, so we need to move outside the walls of our own web sites, and position our collections as a collective good. We ought to be creating 'link to me' tools [buttons?] that encourage the use of museum images on personal and educational sites (in a manner that does not jeapordize revenue streams from commercial licensing).

What reward for such a grand public gesture? Trackback mechanisms are widely in use to measure the reach of blog postings. Surely they could provide a similar metric for museums, helping us assess the breadth of use of on-line collections. Not just a way to report a most linked-to image, reports of links into collections could help us understand patterns of use across broad and deep content.