Information technology and museums: Exhibits of the State Museum of the Netherlands digitized

Specialists of the State Museum of the Netherlands in Amsterdam - Rijksmuseum - digitized 125 000 works from its collection. The digitized images were posted at the website of the museum.

The exhibits are presented in good quality. The user, who downloads the picture, agrees not to use images for commercial purposes. However, each of them he may purchase for commercial use in an even better quality.

According to the director of collections of the State Museum Taco Dibbits, who gave an interview to The New York Times, the refusal of protection of digital images was dictated by the fact that most of the exhibits are of public domain, and to keep track of infringement on the Internet is “still too difficult”.

According to the statement of Dibbits, the museum plans to digitize every year in addition to 40 thousand items of almost one million of the Rijksmuseum collection.

The State Museum of the Netherlands was opened in April 2013 after nearly a decade of the reconstruction.

In recent years there have been several large-scale digital museum projects that open to Internet users an access to collections. For example, in 2011, it was launched Google Art Project, which allows to make virtual tours of the world’s leading museums, agreed to participate in the program. However, every museum, laying out in the Internet digital images of exhibits, sets their terms of the use of images. Thus, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in 2009 made available a number of its collections, but every item available in high resolution, is equipped with a contrasting “water marks” of the museum.