Beyond the Button

Michael Geist, the keynote speaker from Museums and the Web 2008, has a great feature in the BBC today. Highlights from the article:

• In 2006 the V&A museum in London made all digitized images from its collection free for reproduction in academic journals and books
• The National Gallery of Canada actually charges more for public domain images than copyright ones, an average of $379 (canadian).
• Many museums around the world use restrictive and expensive licensing fees for images in the public domain.

Geist was a great speaker on these issues and I'm excited to see some of his ideas make it into the mainstream media with regards to museums.