Share: Silver Level

Restricting Use
For Recollection Wisconsin Content Partners: Sharing on the State and National Levels
Resources and Tools

Restricting Use

A common question we field is how to share digital items online in such a way that they can’t be downloaded or shared without permission. Ultimately, it is impossible to fully prevent someone from copying or saving your images if they wish to do so. 

However, there are several strategies an organization can undertake to mitigate this concern:

  • Use a small-sized, lower-quality image (access copy) for public sharing
  • Add watermarks to digital images
  • Add a code or plugin to your website to disable right-click saving
  • Post a Creative Commons license that requires users to credit the source of the material and does not allow for commercial use or making changes

For Recollection Wisconsin Content Partners: Sharing on the State and National Levels

Recollection Wisconsin works with the University of Wisconsin-Madison General Library System to harvest metadata (descriptive information) and preview images (thumbnails) from content partners using OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). This aggregated metadata is then ingested by the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and made available for discovery alongside millions of metadata records from libraries, archives, and museums across the country.

All metadata contributed to DPLA is available to developers through an open API, or Application Programming Interface. DPLA maintains this open API to encourage the independent development of new and innovative applications, tools, and resources. For example, Umbra Search African American History makes use of metadata from DPLA and other partners to offer a single search tool for discovering African American history in hundreds of collections nationwide.  DPLA also operates a pipeline for partner institutions to contribute open access digital items to Wikimedia Commons, which makes them available for inclusion in Wikipedia articles, allowing for increased discovery and use.

Resources and Tools