Securing Digital Image Assets in Museums and Libraries: A Risk Management Approach

Library Trends, Fall, 1999 by Teresa Grose Beamsley

ABSTRACT

THERE IS AN OBVIOUS NEED FOR ONGOING RESEARCH, evaluation, and planning if museums and archives are committed to protecting their digital image assets. A number of potential threats to the integrity of digital image information can be identified when standard practices in museums and archives are examined. Changes in the integrity of digital image information can be caused by the manner in which the source data are acquired and recorded and by modifications made to the image data file. Alterations made to contextual data can limit valid interpretation of the associated surrogate image. The destruction of the mechanisms that link contextual data to the appropriate digital image has the same effect as deleting contextual information. Loss of control over digital assets can be the result of failure or inability to establish and publicize copyright. Even if copyright is established and enforceable, failure to enforce rights has the same effect as having no rights at all. Finally, failure to detect corruption of digital information means that invalid, partial, or inappropriate information will be spread under the guise of authentic reliable information.

Some institutions are already proactively applying security measures to digital image collections. Some of these security measures can have a negative impact on the integrity of the files that they are designed to protect. Systematic consideration of risk factors can inform the creation of procedures and application of security that works to guarantee the reliability and accuracy of digital image assets.

DIGITAL IMAGE INFORMATION AS AN INSTITUTIONAL ASSET

In their earliest manifestations, museums and archives were essentially collections of primary source materials. The collectors determined the criteria by which artifacts or manuscripts were chosen for preservation. The criteria were based at least in part on the value of the information that was embodied in the content of the materials or implied in the existence of the objects, a value that was established by the needs and interests of wealthy collectors.

Public exposure to museum and archival collections began in earnest at the turn of the nineteenth century. The infrequent opening of personal holdings to scrutiny became more commonplace as the general population came to recognize the existence of these collections and to demand access. In some cases, the profit motives of collection holders played a significant role in the growing accessibility of collections. The public saw value in the experience of gaining physical access to rare and unusual materials. The collectors saw value in offering access (sometimes for profit) to a new market. Selection of materials and the determination of their intrinsic information value were still determined by gentleman collectors. Increasingly, scholars used the information in their studies and augmented the utility of the collections by adding to the body of contextual data about them.

Academic research played an important role in the evolution of the modern nonprofit museum in the early twentieth century. Scholars and connoisseurs formed the basis of a class of professional museum workers. Curators, preperators, and conservators adopted codes of ethics and standards of practice that were instrumental in the development of museums and archives as educational institutions. However, until the 1950s, the primary audiences of both types of institutions were on-site visitors with specific, and often specialist, research needs rather than the casually curious.

During the past twenty years, a combination of changing professional attitudes, the interests of public and private funders, and the growing availability and reliability of reproduction technologies and electronic communication have resulted in a re-evaluation of museum and archival collections. The new target audience is the general education market and the new means of providing information to the target audience is electronic, most often via the Internet. The World Wide Web allows easy access to good quality image representations as well as to text-based contextual information about them. The public's expectation is that a broad range of information needs can and will be accomplished accurately via electronic surrogates without physical exposure to the primary sources from any place at any time. The worth of institutional assets is no longer gauged by looking at the collections inventory appraisal. It is now redefined as the combination of the physical materials in the collections, the surrogates that satisfy a growing demand for visual information about them, and the text-based information that establishes their context and serves as the key to locating them.

Securing collections assets against misuse, theft, or damage is an ongoing concern of museums and archives. A variety of measures are implemented to safeguard collections These include controlled access to storage and items on display, frequent inventories, environmental monitoring, administration of rights and releases, and strict procedures regarding use by staff members and others. Posting extra guards does not help to secure electronic information. And, unlike the Impressionist painting that is kept under surveillance or the Stradivarius violin that is rarely, if ever, removed from the display case, digital assets can be adversely affected by the very measures that are intended to ensure their integrity and authenticity. Security measures typically used in museums and archives to protect these assets are applied randomly at best and unintentionally at worst. Responsible stewardship of digital image assets calls for a more formal and thorough risk management assessment of potential threats and for the creation of an informed and thoughtful security plan for their management and protection.