Intellectual Property and Interactive Multimedia Collaborations

As soon as you start analysing the full extent of the intellectual property aspects of image databases and interactive multimedia, the immediate reaction to the complexities which face you is frustration and hopelessness! The alternative is to start exploring pragmatic approaches to the many problems. 1 A context I hold a strong personal view that the development of image databases in art museums and galleries should, from the outset be as much concerned with their use by general visit-ing publics and for more formal education use (by teachers and students at all levels) as with their use for museum management. Few art museums, collections or temporary exhibitions in Europe (or elsewhere) provide opportunities for their visiting publics to directly or indirectly explore for themselves, aspects of the permanent collections (whether hung, on loan or in store) in any depth; tem-porary exhibitions and their contexts; the work of an individual artist in the context of other work and influences; the historical, social or other contexts that gave rise to the creation of and the subsequent nationaUinternationa1 distribution and display of this art. Many art museums have extensive libraries but even where these are, in principle, available to the visiting public, few are organised and accessible in such a way as to make casual public use a reality. The "quality of experience " of visits to and general use of art museums, and the limited role of exhibition catalogues are subjects that have been suprisingly little researched. Few people actually read an exhibition catalogue in any depth while they are in an exhibition or even afterwards. Eventually the catalogue finds a place on the bookshelf, often still un-read. There is clearly a need for additional context and background and for the exploration of ways in which visitors can be encouraged to spend longer and make more frequent (and more personally satisfying) visits to art museums and galleries. We have to find other, addi-tional, ways of involving and enthusing people