0.5 Approaches to distribution of fee-free images: case studies  (Page 12/13)

• Cost of Collections Management and Documentation : Tens of thousands of images, analog and digital, in the separate SI collections need research to verify or improve their descriptiveinformation. In addition, there is no single digital asset management system (DAMS) for storing high-resolution images and associated cataloging in onelocation. The SI units believe that revenue from image sales is needed to recoup some of the costs necessary to improve collections documentation and implement aDAMS.

• Cost of Rights Research : Smithsonian staff members take their stewardship responsibilities seriously and are meticulous in verifying that every imagereleased has “no known restrictions.” To do so, they must consult both manual and automated collections documentation systems, a labor-intensive and thereforecostly undertaking, given the massive size of the SI photographic collections.

Smithsonian institution joins the commons on flickr

In January 2008, the Library of Congress announced a new pilot project launched with Flickr that was designed to:

help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to ourcollections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity…. 3,000 photosfrom two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page , to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist…. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images,just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves…. We’re also very excited that, as part of thispilot, Flickr has created a new publication model for publicly held photographic collections called The Commons . Flickr hopes, as do we, that the project will eventually capture the imaginationand involvement of other public institutions, as well. Library of Congress Blog, January 16, 2008. (External Link) .

Staff at the Smithsonian Institution were meeting with Library of Congress staff about digital issues during 2007 and early 2008.The early success of the LC/Flickr pilot helped convince Smithsonian units to launch their own Flickr project. Public.Resource.Org ( (External Link) ) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation of public works projects on theInternet. It focuses on increasing the flow of information in both directions between people and the U.S. government. On May 19, 2007, Public.Resource.Orgposted over six thousand images harvested from the Smithsonian Institution’s Images website to the commercial site Flickr, expressing the hope that their action would cause the Smithsonian Institution to broaden its image distributionpolicies. In fact, the Smithsonian Institution was already working on ways to provide better access to its rich photographic collections, as it demonstratedin June 2008. They formed a core team that drew its members from the SI library, archives and museum communities, central programmatic units thatsupport public programs, and from the Office of the Chief Information Office. In February 2008, the group issued a call to the Smithsonian community for digitalimages to be used in the Flickr project with a goal of providing approximately two thousand digital photographic images from a variety of collectionsthroughout the Institution.