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Over the past two decades, digital technology has transformed the creation, management, and distribution of images of museum objects. The transition from catalog cards and analog photography to electronic recordkeeping and digital images has offered dramatic opportunities for museums to improve collection care and documentation and to support greater staff collaboration. Museums began embracing technology in the dissemination of information about their collections by mounting collections information and educational modules on their websites in the mid-1990s. Today, virtual visitors enjoy unprecedented access to images of the most prized art objects in galleries as well as the hidden treasures in storage that are infrequently displayed, studied, or published. Digital technology has begun to change the world of art publishing by lowering the cost of new photography.^[4] Expensive proofing exchanges between museums and printers can be reduced when working in a quality, color-managed digital publishing environment.^[5] Yet there is a downward trend in the number of scholarly art history books published yearly. Some distinguished presses have significantly reduced their art publication programs and others have ceased publishing art monographs entirely.

Museum licensing fees are frequently cited as one—if not the—factor in this decline. In standard museum practice, these fees are charged to partially underwrite the expense of new photography, the reproduction of analog film, and the staff overhead associated with processing the order. Additional fees are levied for permission to reproduce the photograph and are calculated according to the intended use and size of the print run.

This report reviews the debate in the scholarly community about the effects on publishing of fees for the use of museum images. It examines the rationale for charging fees, the costs museums incur in creating images, the changing landscape regarding image production and access, and the solutions three museums have found to provide fee-free images for scholarly publication.