BlogBack: Ben Sanderson of the British Library on Microsoft's Vista Launch

Ben Sanderson, press officer at the British Library, responds to my previous post criticizing the Library for allowing itself and its Leonardo codex to be used for Bill Gates' promotion of Microsoft's new Vista operating system:

As a publicly funded institution, the Library has to supplement the money it receives from the government with sponsorship and support in kind from a variety of sources. In practice, this means that all digitization work has to be paid for out of fundraising/sponsorship/external support.

The Library has a beneficial relationship with Microsoft in a variety of spheres of activity: from the project to digitize 25 million pages of historic collections to the tools and technical support they have offered in work to build a national digital library.

The benefits in terms of bringing researchers, students and members of the public closer to the work of Leonardo---and through a dynamic new interface---are entirely in keeping with our public service remit and would not have been delivered without the working relationship we continue to develop with Microsoft.

In response to your charge that the Library "has been commercially co-opted" I would object that it is rather unfair to lift two quotes from the context of the "Notes to Editors" boiler-plate text attached to each of the linked releases. As you will know, such potted descriptions are part of the apparatus of press releases and, as such, typically supplied by the institution they describe.

"Potted descriptions," I like that. I think we call that "boilerplate" across the pond.

January 31, 2007 10:56 AM | | Comments (0)

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Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on January 31, 2007 10:56 AM.

Da Vinci on Vista: Should Leonardo and the British Library Promote Microsoft? was the previous entry in this blog.

Models for Four Abu Dhabi Facilities Unveiled: Cultural Palaces Fit for a Sheikh? is the next entry in this blog.

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