ABSTRACT
When it was established, the Visual Resources Department of the Israel Museum (then called Photographic Services) set out to serve the needs, not only of the many scholars and publishers abroad seeking visual materials from our collections, but also those of a strong local publishing industry. The former community was mostly well-versed in “rights and reproductions” procedures, but the latter had only a vague idea of what stock photography might be. Traditionally photographs were supplied by photographers, not picture libraries or agencies. Publishers knew little of what copyright licensing meant for works of art or for archaeological artifacts; nor did they imagine that museums would claim that copyright exists in photographs of works of art. The idea of compensating museums for their time, work, and the use of their intellectual property was a startling concept. To them, museums were handy repositories of endlessly free cultural resources.
