Angelina Russo put me on to this interesting short think piece from The Art Newspaper Oct 2005.
Whatever solutions are preferred, the landscape looks like this: museums will ultimately embrace file-sharing, and overcome their fear of loss of authority. Curatorial scholarship will likely find its way near the top of the information pyramid, but is best served up in a more accessible format if it has the public at large in mind. Furthermore, the way forward will likely be with a combination of free content and licensable, high-resolution multimedia content, most economically built by consortia instead of by one museum at a time. The content will have to be updated, open to folksonomy protocols that encourage end users to contribute to databases, and that emphasize live features (real-time tours of shows and behind-the-scenes experiences) that people will pay a modest amount for. Museums will begin focusing on those things that younger audiences will be prepared to download for a micro-payment or subscription, alongside ample free offerings.
Have you tried the folksonomy tools on our recently release OPAC 2.0?