i've been thinking a bit about the relationship museums have with their collections; about the sense of responsibility to preserve and interpret that comes with custody, and about what might change in an environment where social network spaces are the norm.

in 1997 at the first Museums and the Web museums were really worried about questions of control. there were long discussions about appropriation, about commercial use, and a lot of angst about the possibilities of mugs and keychains. partly this was based on the fact that corbis (aka continuum, aka interactive home systems) had been buying rights in the area, and creating a sense that there must be a market for museum images.