Museums traditionally are concerned with the selection of precious, rare, or unique objects. Libraries are traditionally concerned with expanding access to generally available objects. Many digital artworks are easily replicable, and artists are more interested in making them accessible than rare. In this context, some of the differences between a museum collection of digital artworks and a library collection of digital objects begin to converge. As Jon Ippolito, progenitor of the Variable Media Initiative, provocatively put it in regard to the non-uniqueness of certain digital works: "For museums to acquire open-licensed art would require then to transform from collecting institutions to circulating institutions".
Dietz, 2005, p. 94
|
