This paper summarizes the findings of a two-year study of digital image distribution and publication, focusing on the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL). This study (Besser & Yamashita 1998) evaluated the costs, infrastructure, and efforts involved in implementing the MESL project, as well as user reaction to functionality. The study also examined costs of running analog slide libraries and compared these to costs and functionality associated with digital image distribution. The MESL Project was the first US attempt to take a collection of images and accompanying metadata from a variety of museums and publish these in digital form on campus networks. It was a two-year experimental collaboration among seven museums and seven universities that distributed over 9,000 digital images and associated text for classroom use. The study discusses cost-center models for looking at the distribution of digital and analog images, including creating digital images and metadata, mounting and distributing digital images, maintaining a distribution house, running a slide library, and an analysis of hybrid image libraries. It presents a comparison of user interfaces and search engines from the MESL universities. It also reports on the results of focus groups discussing faculty adoption of digital images for classroom use.