This newly released report is the product of a 22-month UC Berkeley study of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL), a two-year experimental collaboration between seven cultural repositories and seven universities that distributed approximately 10,000 images for classroom use and individual research. The report found that, while the higher education community is enthusiastic about providing access to digital images, numerous impediments mean that digital and analog libraries will necessarily coexist for some time yet. One of the most substantial of these impediments is, and will continue to be, the conflicting concerns of universities and museum image distribution consortia over access and payment. Those involved in image digitization or distribution or those contemplating involvement, particularly members of a scholarly community, will find numerous items of interest in this report.
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