The published report includes a summary of the conference discussions about the commissioned papers. Highest on the list of concerns seemed to be intellectual property rights, the cost of digitization, and the preservation of digital assets. Perspectives at times sharply diverged between museums and libraries, and sometimes between different types of museums and different types of libraries. One area approached differently by libraries and museums was the issue of selecting collections for digitization. The value libraries add is in the organization of materials and the access provided for the researcher.
Libraries focus on enhancing research.
There is the question of standards. There is cross collection searching and interoperability that needs to be built in. Our interest is not just to put up a lot of wallpaper, but to build research tools that people can use. Museums, on the other hand, tend to thoughtfully select items from their holdings for online presentation to the public, just as they select items for display in exhibitions. They attract visitors to their Web sites through online exhibits that provide context and meaning to objects in their collections.