Guidelines for Including Images With Your Records

Showcase your museum or organization by posting images in the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC)! These guidelines show you how to include images with online records submitted to the Your Institution and Your Events sections.

Please note: The Your Institution and Your Events databases feed the Museums in Canada section of the VMC, which publicly displays information about your institution, its collections and events.

Introduction

An important benefit of CHIN membership is the ability to include images with your entries in the Your Institution and Your Events databases. Your images and entries will be displayed in the VMC's Museums in Canada section. As a CHIN member, you can showcase your organization by highlighting unique or exemplary objects in your collection, and by providing audiences with sneak previews of your events.

Your organization may already possess many images that are ideal for entry. Consider undertakings such as publications, special exhibits, loans, research, promotional material, CD-ROM projects and imaging projects for archival purposes, etc., all of which may have resulted in the production of suitable images from your institution and/or objects in your collection.

You have several options for including images in your entry. As a contributor to Your Institution and Your Events, you will complete an entry form on your institution and collections information, and a separate entry form to document each of your events. For each institution or event entry, two types of images may be included:

A main image chosen to represent the institution or event.
Up to five additional images per entry that are assembled in the photo album associated with the display pages for each institution and/or event.

About Main Images

An institution’s entry main image can be any image that you feel represents your institution or its collections. This image is publicly displayed on the principal display page for your institution in the VMC's Museums in Canada section. Most CHIN members have chosen to use an image of the physical building of their institution, however, other options include a graphic image (e.g., a logo), an image of a particular object in the collection, an image of a significant person or group of persons, or any other representational image.

An event entry's main image is any image that you feel represents your event to its audience, such as an object associated with the event, promotional material, images from previous occurrences of the event, posters, etc. An event entry's main image appears on the display page for the event in the VMC's Museums in Canada section.

Main images are available in two sizes: a display-size that appears on the principal display page for the entry, and a larger, full-size image that is available to visitors who click on the display-size image. All full-size images included with your Guide entry must be accompanied by a copyright statement.

Contributing Main Images

In order to ensure that main images display properly in the VMC's Museums in Canada section, we request that they be submitted directly to us to be included in your institution or event record. All main images will then be stored on the CHIN server.

CHIN will format all main images to the appropriate size, and link them to your institution or event display page in the VMC. Please note that because of this formatting process, you will not have update access to main images. Updates to main images must be processed through CHIN.

Institutions should submit images to CHIN in digital or photographic format. Digital images can be sent to CHIN via FTP, email, diskette, CD-ROM or any other format, provided that CHIN has the necessary technology to process them. The smaller display-size images must have a resolution of 200 pixels on the longest side, while the larger, full-size image can be any resolution, although a resolution of approximately 500 pixels on the longest side is recommended. Please see About Digital Images, below for further details on digital images.

If your institution lacks the necessary technology to generate digital images, a main image may be submitted in photographic format, such as a photograph or slide, that can be scanned and digitized by CHIN. Please contact CHIN for further information on submitting an image in photographic format.

Copyright Statements for Main Images

A copyright statement must accompany each full-size image included with your entry. For main images, please submit the copyright statement, in written or electronic format, to CHIN for input to your entry. A copyright statement includes:

the copyright symbol;
the date of copyright;
the name of the copyright holder;
the statement "All Rights Reserved.".

Please also read Image Copyright

About Photo Album Images

Photo albums allow VMC visitors to browse through a selection of images representing your institution's collections or events, and as such, are a significant promotional opportunity for your institution. Each photo album, available from the display page of your institution or an event, may contain up to five images. The subject of the images can be anything that you feel represents your institution or event: special or exemplary pieces from a collection, objects associated with an event, promotional material — there is no limit to what can be included.

Images in a photo album are displayed in two sizes: a small thumbnail image and a larger, full-size image. The thumbnail image is used as a link to the full-size image and may have an associated caption or description providing information about the image. Please note, however, that the inclusion of the thumbnail image is optional: an icon, generated by CHIN, can be substituted for the thumbnail to indicate the presence of a full-size image.

Contributing Photo Album Images

Each institution is encouraged to generate and maintain its own digital photo album images, as well as any corresponding descriptive text and copyright information. However, for those institutions that do not have the necessary imaging technology or resources to generate their own images, CHIN will provide assistance by scanning and generating the digitized images from photographic format, and/or by performing additional formatting work on the images. Please contact CHIN for further information on assistance with generating photo album images.

Photo album images should reside on your institution's server or on another Internet-accessible server. We encourage you to consider using existing images taken from your institution or events that may already be on the Web (for example, on your own website).

If you do not have access to a server, you can request the use of CHIN's server to store your photo album images. With this arrangement, user accounts will be provided to upload and store image files using FTP. Please contact CHIN for further information on using the CHIN server to store your images.

Photo album images are included with your entry by entering the images' file names or URLs in your institution or event entry form. Space for this information, as well as for descriptive text and copyright information, is included in the entry forms under the heading "Images for the photo album". In the appropriate field, enter the image file name or fully qualified URL, for example:

http://www.museum.ca/guideimagedirectory/filename.gif

Full-size photo album images can be of any resolution, although a size of approximately 500 pixels on the longest side is recommended. A smaller, thumbnail image (maximum resolution 125 pixels on the longest side) can also be provided to act as a link from the photo album to the full-size image. If, however, the thumbnail image is not provided, an icon will be automatically substituted in the photo album, indicating that a full-size image is available for display.

Please see About Digital Images below, for more information on digital images.

Captions/Descriptive Text for Photo Album Images

A short, descriptive sentence can be included with each photo album image to provide context for the image. Text should be a maximum of 100 characters, and entered by the institution in the space provided in the institution or event entry form.

Copyright Statements for Photo Album Images

A copyright statement must accompany each full-size image included with your Guide entry. The copyright statements for photo album images can be entered in the space provided in the institution or event entry form, and should include:

the copyright symbol;
the date of copyright;
the name of the copyright holder; and

Please also read Image Copyright

About Digital Images

Images included with your entry are accessed via the Web and, therefore, must be generated in a digital image file format that can easily be displayed in any of the common Web browsers, i.e., Netscape or Internet Explorer. The most common image file formats are JPG and GIF, both of which are widely accepted on the Web.

The quality of the digital images depends on the number of colours in the image that can be displayed. An image in GIF file format is limited to 256 colours (8 bit), whereas digital images in JPG file formats can be displayed in 16 million colours (24 bit) or more, thereby providing a much higher quality image.

The size (height and width) of an image is usually measured in pixels. Large, full-size images displayed in the VMC's Museums in Canada section can be any size, although a size of approximately 500 x 500 pixels is recommended. The smaller or thumbnail images must measure 200 pixels (main images) or 125 pixels (photo album images) on the longest side.

The file size of the digital image is also an important consideration. The larger the file, the longer it will take Web browsers to download and display the image, especially when using a slow modem. We recommend a maximum file size of 30–40KB.