Will online images prove to be a multimedia cornucopia for museums?

Faced with increasingly tight budgets many museums have come under pressure to explore new sources of income. The marketing of museum assets seems to offer one possibility especially since there is an apparently insatiable demand for content from the multimedia and "edutainment' industries. Furthermore, providing access to the cultural heritage of Europe has come to be seen as a major aim of the EU and various programmes have been set up to encourage and facilitate this. Apart from the economic potential of digital museum content, the concomitant legal and security issues are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]