Please excuse cross postings. full document at: http://aamd.org/papers/documents/AAMDFairUseGuidelinesHLP1-10-11_2_.pdf
core excerpts: A. AAMD encourages member museums to develop clear written intellectual property and/or digital imaging policies and guidelines. B. Member museums must comply with all applicable laws in the reproduction of works in their collection and the use and dissemination of images of those works. Member museums must respect the rights of artists and copyright holders to protect the integrity of their works and to receive the benefits of the rights, including financial rights, accorded to artists and copyright holders by law, but those rights do not preclude the museum from exercising its statutory rights to fair use of images. C. Without intending to limit any other fair use thereof and recognizing that there are many uses of thumbnail images by museums that meet the statutory fair use test, AAMD supports the position that a museum??s use of thumbnail images in the museum??s collections image database, promotional materials to identify works in a museum??s collection, and online scholarly publications are fair uses under applicable provisions of the United States copyright law. D. Museums should not be requested or required to pay fees for the fair use of such thumbnail images in the museum??s collections image database, promotional materials to identify works in the museum??s collection, or online scholarly publications. E. Except in extraordinary circumstances or where such information is unknown, the Museum should provide with such thumbnail images appropriate information as to artist, title and owner of the work. <snip> Online scholarly publications means an educational publication made available (i) on a website whose primary purpose does not include paid advertising or the selling of merchandise, or (ii) on a subscription-based website with no more than 2,000 subscribers, provided, multiple end users accessing content through one subscription agreement shall be considered one subscription, or (iii) on a website that provides archival versions of the publication in non-profit electronic archives such as JSTOR and/or in for-profit electronic library content providers such as EBSCO or ProQuest. <snip> Thumbnail image means a low resolution, small version of less than commercial quality (less than 250 x 300 pixels) of a digital image that is typically used in a collection image database, on a web page, or in an online publication to represent an image or to provide a link to other content, such as a larger version of the image. Thumbnail images may or may not link to higher resolution images. <snip> posted by Alan Newman National Gallery of Art
