Media Ownership, Management, and Reuse Permissions
Media representing museum specimens have many stakeholders involved in their creation and management. Main examples include:
- The researcher who needs a scan of a museum specimen for their research
- The museum curator/staff who approve the researcher's request to scan
- The general counsels of museums and institutions who set the allowable sharing policies of digital media
- The individuals who actually make the scan
- The individual who uploads the scan to MorphoSource
- The museum curator/staff who are responsible for 3D digital assets of their collections
- The individual who is granted the authority to make decisions about re-use of the scan by third parties (Decisions about re-use may reflect a range of considerations/stakeholders. They should always be consistent with upstream policies from museums that have staked a claim).
It is nearly impossible for a single individual to represent all these different roles. Thus, in order for MorphoSource to make media representing museum objects accessible in a way that supports all of these independent roles, the system has some unavoidable complexity.
The main subsections of this document will describe two different considerations that help ensure the expectations of all stakeholders are met.
Rights, Licenses, and Usage Settings for Media
Data Managers and Other User Roles deal with making sure the correct active user accounts are associated with the correct media in the correct ways. These roles can be used to facilitate stakeholders with MorphoSource user accounts have access to and managing media in the appropriate ways.
Rights, Licenses, and Usage Settings are less about associating a particular user accounts with media and more about making sure the legal intellectual property (IP) holders of the data are specified and that the customized license terms are consistent with policies set by cognizant museums or other IP holders.