For Museums – In museums

How to join?

Join the group of museums that make their digital collections available in one place! We share a common mission to expand and improve access to digital cultural heritage.

Below you will find practical information on how to join us and provide data about your museum's collection on inmuseums.pl.

Thanks to the presentation of digital collections together, in one place, not only our recipients benefit, but also the museums!
- Increasing the visibility of the museum on the internet and reaching new target groups,
- support in achieving each museum's mission, which is to disseminate knowledge about the heritage that we care for,
- access to expert knowledge and best practices in terms of collection development, digitization with five different techniques, creating your own digitization workshops, copyright, and licensing; ongoing contact with specialists and practitioners from all over Poland,
- objects from your museum can also be presented in the form of engaging stories in educational paths alongside objects from other museums.
To become a data provider and start publishing digital collections of your museum, it is necessary to meet several formal requirements.
1. We invite museums of various types to cooperate: state, local government, private or community, dealing with cultural heritage. Your institution does not need to be in the National Register of Museums run by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
2. Objects or collections that you plan to publish must have a regulated legal status. Owning an object in a collection does not necessarily mean owning the copyright to it. Copyrights are not automatically transferred when a cultural asset is purchased, gifted, or otherwise finds its way into the collection of a cultural heritage institution. Unless a contract has been concluded with the copyright owner to transfer the copyrights or the rights have not expired 70 years after the author's death, you are not the copyright owner. This presents a challenge in the case of digitization and the desire to publish cultural heritage online.
3. Objects must have a developed minimum set of metadata and must be digitized, i.e., have at least one professionally taken photograph documenting their current appearance. You can read more about preparing information about objects and their reproductions in the "Technical Criteria" section. This work must be done by the museum on its own. Museums that are already publishing data on the service provide substantive support and practical advice.
4. A partnership agreement must be concluded with the Museum of King Jan III's Palace in Wilanów – the owner of the service. Under the agreement, you agree to pay a membership fee, which covers the cost of disk space where data about objects published on the service are stored. If you want to familiarize yourself with the model of the partnership agreement, write to us.
On the service, we present objects from various museums in Poland. In order to ensure that the information is comprehensive, readable, and easy to search, it is published according to a standard that applies to all museums.

Object descriptions

Objects published on the service should be exhaustively described. The following information should be provided:
1. Inventory / identification number
2. Type of object
3. Name, title, subtitle, historical names (if any)
4. Material
5. Technique of execution
6. Dating
7. Dimensions of the whole object
8. Place of manufacture or discovery of the object
9. Full name of the object's owner
10. Current location of the object
11. How the object was acquired
12. Information about signatures, marks, inscriptions on the object: type, location, description, content
13. Popularising note up to 2000 characters
14. Keywords
15. Name of the collection to which the object belongs
16. Collection description up to 2000 characters
Detailed instructions on how to provide the indicated information are in the object register template in the attachment. The completed template is then uploaded via the content management panel, to which each Partner has access.

Types of visual documentation

An object published on the service must have at least one photograph reflecting its current appearance. However, the service allows the publication of visual documentation made with five different techniques:
- classic documentary photography – files in JPG, TIF formats
- gigapixel photography – JPG files – photography of two-dimensional objects, which in reality consists of many, high-resolution photographs, combined into one large image. Allows for a very large zoom of the image,
- GIS map – allows to document and reflect on the map various spatial resources e.g.: archaeological sites, interiors and facades of buildings, tree stands or old maps superimposed on modern ones – the museum must have its own GIS portal, to which we direct in the service,
- 3D model – the museum must have its own account on the Sketchfab portal, from which we publish models in the service,
- RTI image – files in format – technique in which flat objects are recorded in changing lighting, which allows for better observation of their interesting texture.
Files are uploaded to a common repository from the content management panel. In the case of GIS maps and 3D models, content is embedded to external portals (ArcGIS and Sketchfab).

Photo metadata

Object photographs should be marked with metadata in the IPTC standard. It is mandatory to provide information about the copyright to the photograph and the conditions of its use, as well as an alternative description indicating what is in the photo (also check the guide on how to write alternative descriptions). The full set of metadata along with instructions on how to fill it out is in the attachment in the XMP template. Photo metadata can be developed in free software like Adobe Bridge.
We believe that everyone should have access to cultural heritage on the internet! In order for users to know how they can further use digital reproductions, clear and simple information about rights must be provided.

Visual documentation of objects published on our service should contain a rights statement. We use Creative Commons licenses, which allow for the re-use of published visual materials.
- CC0 – No Copyright – This is a label and a tool at the same time, which allows "waiving" copyright to the work (including personal) in those countries where it is legally possible.
- CC PDM – Public Domain Mark – is a mark used to identify a given work as belonging to the public domain. Such a work can be used, distributed, and modified, even for commercial purposes, without the need to obtain the author's consent.
- CC BY – Attribution – This license allows for copying, modifying, distributing, performing, and performing the work only under the condition of crediting the author. It is a license that guarantees the widest freedoms for the licensee.
- CC BY-SA – Attribution-ShareAlike – This license allows for copying, modifying, distributing, performing, and performing the work as long as the same license is granted to derivative works. It is a license used by Wikipedia and its sister projects.
- CC BY-NC – Attribution-NonCommercial – This license allows for copying, modifying, remixing, distributing, performing, and performing the work only for non-commercial purposes. However, this condition does not apply to derivative works (they can be covered by another license).
- CC BY-ND – Attribution-NoDerivs – This license permits the distribution, display, and performance of the work for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided it is kept in its original form (no derivative works are created).
- CC-BY-NC-SA – Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike – This license allows for the distribution, display, and performance of the work only for non-commercial purposes and as long as derivative works are also covered by the same license.
- CC-BY-NC-ND – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs – This license permits the distribution, display, and performance of the work only for non-commercial purposes and provided it is kept in its original form (no derivative works are created). This is the most restrictive of the licenses.
Each visual documentation of an object must be accompanied by one of the above licenses or statements. In the case of documentary photography, the information is supplemented in the metadata, in the IPTC standard, in the "Rights usage terms" field, where you need to paste a link to the appropriate license or statement on the Creative Commons website in the Polish language version. For other, advanced types of documentation, the license is supplemented in the content management panel (each Partner receives access to it) after previously loading files into the repository.
Once you have properly processed objects and collections, data publication on the service is done through the content management panel.

Each Partner receives access to it, where you can:
- edit the subpage of your museum,
- upload visual documentation of objects to the repository,
- publish metadata about objects in the Polish and English language versions by sending and saving the completed spreadsheet template.