Besser, Howard.

The Museum Educational Site Licensing (MESL) Project (1994-1997) was designed to explore the feasibility of networked distribution of digital museum content in educational settings. The Project grew out of two meetings held in March 1994. The first was sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Trust's Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP); the second by MUSE Educational Media. The AHIP meeting's purpose was to announce the launch of a digital imaging initiative; the MUSE meeting's purpose was to discuss the results of a study for developing model licensing agreements for digital media on CD-ROMs. Detailed planning for the MESL Project took place during the summer of 1994 and involved David Bearman (President, Archives and Museum Informatics), Howard Besser (Associate Professor, Information and Library Studies, University of Michigan), Eleanor Fink (Director, AHIP), Geoffrey Samuels (Director, MUSE Museum Multimedia Study Group), and Jennifer Trant (Consultant, and Manager of the Imaging Initiative, AHIP).

The MESL Project was originally framed as a testbed demonstration project to bring together museums and universities to explore the administrative, legal, economic, technical and educational issues surrounding networked distribution of museum content for educational use. The organizational phase of the project was supported by AHIP and MUSE Educational Media. The second phase of the Project was supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and focused on studying the costs and benefits of networked distribution of digital museum information for educational use.

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