Do you know of any museums which watermark their online images?

April 29, 2009 12:58 PM

I need a list of museums which watermark (or otherwise alter for the purpose of control) the images they make available online.

Actually, I'm arguing that it's rarely done, and I don't find a lot of examples. But I worry about being wrong and missing a bunch.

posted by COBRA! to media & arts (6 comments total)

Go to the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and look through their digital archives. If you click on the large view of any of the manuscripts, pictures or editions, you'll see a faint LVB watermark on each page.
http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php//portal_en

Other digital archives make it instead impossible to download or save information in high resolution.
Some don't bother with all this at all, like the University of Kiel library's' online archives, or that early-Chopin-editions archive in Chicago.
It is more likely that document scans (like in my example), which can be used for scholarly research, are watermarked this way - so this is actually more a digital-archives-of-libraries thing. But the Beethoven Haus is in fact a museum too. At Bonn, if you ask for permission for reproduction they send you a scan without a watermark.
posted by Namlit at 1:32 PM on April 29

I know that the Glenbow Museum, one of the largest in Canada, marks its archival photos (here is an example) and may mark other images.
posted by angiep at 1:41 PM on April 29

Thanks, guys.
posted by COBRA! at 5:39 PM on April 29

The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, Arkansas watermarks their images, although when they first started putting up online photo exhibits they did not.
posted by Coyote at the Dog Show at 5:51 PM on April 29

OK, I asked my museum friends over some other social media and I found that Indianapolis watermarks their largest image size, but that's the only one.

Honestly, since I can't think of any off the top of my head either few do it, or it's rather unobtrusive. Of course, I can't imagine a museum doing it unobtrusively. Someone would want donor info on there too, and accession numbers, and all kinds of other data.

This of course, is all about visible watermarks and not stenographic ones like DigiMark. What I really want is everyone to use iptc tags so when I find a random image and want to find out more about it I can look at the tags embedded in the image instead of asking metafilter.
posted by advicepig at 6:21 AM on April 30

Of course, I can't imagine a museum doing it unobtrusively. Someone would want donor info on there too, and accession numbers, and all kinds of other data.

God, you're totally right. I think it's a bad idea to begin with, but a whole bunch of worse ideas would follow.

Thanks...
posted by COBRA! at 10:29 AM on April 30