[PRCo] Re: Generic Description and Scanning

[Stephen Titchenal]

Sorry for accidently sending an empty message.

How much money does the museum make from their archives right now? Won't
reputable book publishers still purchase rights to use a photo from you,
even if copies are available online? If you feel you can make enough money
from collectors, why not hire someone to manage an ebay store and sell
online. Even if the images are publicly available elsewhere, I would presume
many collectors would rather support a non-profit organization than a
for-profit company.

The Library of Congress has been distributing high resolution digitized
images from their collection for years. Others attempt to resell the images,
but unless they have put a lot of work into adding value to them, I doubt
they make a lot of money from it (and even then they may not get their
investment back). But think of the number of "backup copies" of the images
that are out there now!

Archive.org is sharing vast storehouses of digital data, but their search
mechanism currently leaves something to be desired. There are some wonderful
Pittsburgh Railways resources already digitized there by the way.

As a retired educator, I appreciate the resources that are online for
students, researchers and just the average person to repurpose. Just as open
source is a group process, learning should also be. I spend my time working
with organizations that are willing to share their resources. I see many
value-added examples from sharing rather the hiding resources.