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Re: Watermarks for Photographs



> Please let me know if your archives attaches watermarks to
photographic
> images which you place on the Web.
>
I'm glad you asked this question!  This came up as we began to
put more and more images up on our website.  A while ago, we
started using a new database which enables us to put whole
collections of images on the web.  That was all well and good, and
useful both to patrons and ourselves, not to mention very
impressive to the Powers That Be.  Being suspicious and paranoid
to some degree, though, I got to worrying about people just
downloading the images we had put up and doing with them what
they will without seeking permission.

The first approach I took was to include a statement in the
metadata that said "This material may be protected by copyright.
Permission required for use in any form. Please contact the
Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott
Library, University of Utah."  This is on every image that is in the
database.  Again, though, I wanted something more, something
that would be right on the image itself, so we made a layer in
Photoshop that now goes on each image, which says "MAY BE
PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT / SPECIAL COLLECTIONS / J.
WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY / UNIVERSITY OF UTAH"  THis
goes right over the top of the photo, or actually in the upper left
corner (because that's the only place Photoshop would let us put
it).

I liked this a lot; it made the statement I wanted to make,
prevented unauthorized use--or at least cleared us of culpability if
such use was made, by easily cropping that part out--and made
our donors and administration feel like we were addressing this
problem. However, I got grief from elsewhere in the building from
someone also engaged in digitizing images and posting them (a
complicated admin. setup that I won't go into) who said he felt it
ruined the "aesthetics" of the page.  I was a little brusque and said
"Aesthetics-smesthetics, to me this is just a glorfied card catalog,
not a work of art."  My only regret is that I wasn't smart enough to
start doing this before we had about 3500 images up on the site.
So far I'm supported by the administration in this.

If you've read this far in this long-winded reply (can you tell I'm
trying to avoid finishing up personnel evaluations and writing a
report?) you will want to see this for yourself.  TO do so, go to our
site:  http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo.  Since it isn't on every
collection page, use the numeric index to go to the following:
P0068, Dick Beck, and P0389, Junior Bounous (or you could use
the alphabetic index too).  Once at the page, click on the
"BROWSE PHOTOS" link to get to the database with the images.

Tell me what you think!  I realize it's kind of a quick and dirty
solution but I'm happy with it.

You might also check out Northern Arizona University's Cline
Library Special Collections site, which takes a different approach
by using a proprietary program called Digimark to add code to the
digital file whereby they can prove the image was used without
authorization.

Stop me before I post again,





Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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