Abstract:
There is a growing trend among larger museums and heritage organizations to digitize
their collections, both their artifact collections, and their collections of research
publications and books. Some of these printed works are still under copyright, and
some are in the public domain. Of those copyrighted works, some are owned by the
organization, and some are not. This creates some significant legal hurdles for
organizations wanting to digitize large collections on a massive scale. By looking at the
recent legal case Google v. Authors’ Guild and the mass digitization projects at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, this Master’s degree capstone study examines the
emerging issues of mass digitization projects, and the marketing potential of making
collections available online.