4. Worth more than a thousand words

I'm put off by websites that are text-heavy. Images help to improve presentation and can also be a useful aid to people who don't have English as their first language. Information management systems such as bibliography packages tend not to have images other than a logo - functionality is important but personally I think images would make people want to use the systems.

The most commonly used formats for websites are Gif, Jpeg and Png:

Gif (graphics interchange format) images record up to 256 colours and are lossless as they retain information when compressed. Gifs can be used to create animated files by placing one image upon another.

Jpeg (joint photographic experts group) supports more than 16 million colours and is the common format for photographs. They are lossy as they lose information when compressed.

Png (portable network graphics) is similar to Gifs in that it is lossless but is higher quality as it caters for up to 24 bits in colour. However, it cannot be animated.

This link illustrates what happens to images when they are resized and resampled. Throughout this blog, I've used different image formats to show the differences.

When digitising records, you need to consider which format is most appropriate for what purpose. For example, in archiving and preservation, it would need to be at optimum resolution whereas for the web, it would be lower quality so that they load up quickly. Using formats that support metadata such as Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) is recommended by the National Archives when preserving images as this would enable high searchability.

Images can be added to websites by embedding a file that's saved on your drive (example 1). It can also be linked from an online source (example 2). Be aware that if the file is moved or removed, then you will lose the image from your website.

Also be mindful of copyright issues. There are websites where you can obtain copyright-free photographs, such as copyright-free.com and freeimages.co.uk.