The use of embedded metadata in heritage image workflows

Abstract

With increasing scrutiny of museum and gallery public access and dissemination policies, heritage organisations are investing heavily in the online user experience. This includes allowing users to browse and search for images and other media of objects and artefacts held by the organisation. While public interface websites are attracting a lot of attention, their creators often forget that the media on them — generally images at present — can be viewed and used in environments other than the originating website. Heritage organisations encourage the public to download images and use them for private non-commercial purposes. This is where the use of embedded data becomes important. This paper details some of the ways embedded data may be used in practice, both in internal workflows and for images on publicly accessible websites.