South East Museums

The effective management of Intellectual Property Rights and of other cultural assets, such as collections, staff expertise, locations and facilities, are hugely important to museums to ensure that they can provide public access to their collections, as well as allowing them to optimise income generation opportunities.

Some museums are actively identifying and exploiting a wide range of Intellectual Property and other cultural assets while others are unfortunately ignoring their potential as part of a general approach to effective management or in finding alternative sources of income.

Yorkshire Museum Development IPR Resources

These advice sheets provide a practical introduction to and guidance in the management of IPR and cultural assets in museums and were originally developed as part of a Renaissance Yorkshire programme on the Effective Management of Intellectual Property Rights and Cultural Assets in 2010-11 in association with Naomi Korn, a recognised expert in the field of museum copyright. They covered many of the basic elements which museums need to deal with in this area of their work. They also provided pointers to further sources of information and advice and included two template documents which may be adapted for use by a museum.

During 2014-15 these documents were extensively reviewed with Naomi Korn and revised in the light of recent legislative and other changes.

They are published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence which allows your museum to use and adopt them without the need to seek copyright permission although the source should be acknowledged.