Cairie-- I would definitely recommend making the photos available to the public for comment. This does a number of valuable things for you: 1. Increases awareness of your museum and collections, as people start talking about what photos they've found there. 2. Builds some ownership among your audience when they see their input is being respected and used. 3. Potentially builds a greater base of knowledge about your collections than you/the museum could ever find through static research. 4. Ideally, when this goes well it can increase the number of donations to your museum. As people see how well you manage and utilize what you have they will be more confident in giving. 5. Could lead to oral history opportunities.
Here's the grain of salt though. Be sure to make this user input available to viewers, but make it clear if the info has not been verified by the museum. Along these lines be sure to set the comments to an "approval-first" mode. In this case, a staffer will review what has been submitted then has too "approve" the comment before it appears on the page. You could have text on the web page that this is a pilot program, an experiment that you'd like to do with the museum community. Collaboration is great! Hope this helps. Adam Mikos