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Data curation is defined as “the active and ongoing management of data through its lifecycle of interest and usefulness to scholarship, science, and education.” (GSLIS) The volume of scientific data is growing exponentially across all scientific disciplines. This phenomenon has been termed the “data deluge.” The data deluge is now a fundamental characteristic of e-science and “big science,” especially in disciplines such as physics, astronomy, and earth and atmospheric sciences. Moreover, stakeholders are beginning to recognize the value in sharing data assets with each other and in curation of data for re-use over the long term. Competent information professionals are needed to curate this data for future research and education requirements.

The Walters is a museum that’s free to the public, and to be public these days is to be on the Internet. Therefore to be a public museum your digital data should be free. And the great thing about digital data, particularly of historic collections, is that they’re the greatest advert that these collections have. So: Why on Earth would you limit how people can use them? The digital data is not a threat to the real data, it’s just an advertisement that only increases the aura of the original, so there just doesn’t seem to be any point in putting restrictions on the data.

Institutions with special collections, particularly museums — libraries perhaps less so — want to improve their brand and raise visitorship. One way in which they can do that is through advertising. And what better way to advertise than by making instantly available, or as available as possible, images of their collections? Because that’s how they get known.