Digital materials are so easily redistributed that they almost lose credibility if not acquired from the initial upload. Even when acquired from commercial sites, then you'd want to further check the objects' authenticity and the place you are purchasing it from and their credibility. Its the basic issue of online shopping where the dress that arrives does not match the listing.
An interesting issue I have found when trying to locate high resolution scans of J.C. Leyendecker's work is that the best scans come from people's personal tumblr and blogs, not any art galleries or museums. Nothing is more frustrating than finding documents just scanned in at 72 DPI/PPI and labelled as high resolution. While 72 DPI/PPI may be fine for just web viewing, 300 DPI/PPI is the basic resolution for all printed material and should be made available whenever possible. In regards to are resolution of artwork, I'd hope that places would make a 600 DPI/PPI version available. While I can understand them not wanting to risk people making their own prints of artwork, it should be something they are willing to risk to educate people or at least make available upon request.
As an illustrator, all traditional artwork gets scanned in, photoshoped, and then saved down to the appropriate sizing for either print or web. When doing research on the Poultney Mill in Leesburg, I had used the microfiche to view probate and deeds to track all mention of John Poultney and his mill. To print the documents, the program uses the simple image capture function, then exported it as a TIFF. Then the file's color had to be inverted, which the only reason I could attribute to is the older computers not playing nice or packaging files differently than current computers do. I believe those computers were running either Windows 98 or XP.
Most use the 72 dpi to avoid a user from taking the image and using it in a for-profit publication. It's a simple way to protect your artwork. I don't put anything on the web above 100 dpi.
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