Guide to REALIA Project Digital Images

How to select images

REALIA seeks high-quality images which will be useful to instructors. Images contributed should:

  1. have strong cultural or language content: depict a cultural subject or topic of interest and that could be used in a classroom
    Sample image subjects
    • daily life in a foreign country
    • signs, placards, graffiti and other cultural objects using the target language
    • important or typical buildings, places or people
    • food and drink
    • scans of ticket stubs and other "found objects" that are uniue to a country or culture
  2. be at least 1200 x 1600 pixels in dimension
  3. be in TIFF or JPEG format less than 20MB in size each
  4. approximate their true vertical and horizontal alignment (please rotate the images if necessary), and have unflattering or distracting elements cropped out
  5. should reflect color as accurately as possible and utilize the best contrast for conveying information. Excessive saturation of one color, tinting, and overly dark or light areas can be corrected in most photo editing software.

Images to avoid

Images for the REALIA Project need to respect copyright and, in general, be usable in instructional contexts.

NOT acceptable
  • scans of postcards, book illustrations, or other copyright-sensitive material taken out of context (photos of posters posted on a wall, or graffiti, etc. in context would be acceptable in most cases)
  • photos from museums or art galleries depicting the artwork inside (architecture, landscapes, and external sculpture are generally ok)
  • vacation-style photos, with friends or family in the foreground

How to grant permission to the project to distribute

Images contributed to REALIA must be done provided with the approval of the copyright owner. Accordingly, the copyright owner must sign an return a copyright release form, which grants the project permission to distribute the images under the terms described in the form. A copy of the form can be found here: http://realiaproject.org/docs/REALIA_Release_form.pdf

How to describe the images

You will use the online Oasis contributions system to submit and describe your digital images. If you do not have an Oasis account, but would like one, please email info@realiaproject.org

Required fields

All images must contain text for these fields in order to be contributed to the REALIA database.

Title Supply a brief desciptive title in English; use uppercase for initial word and no period at the end, e.g.: "Ice cream seller"
Vernacular title Translate the title. Use uppercase for initial word and no period at the end.
Description When describing your images, be as specific as possible about the location and cultural content. Use complete sentences with uppercase initial word and period at end. Examples:
      http://contentdm.nitle.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/realia&CISOPTR=846
      http://contentdm.nitle.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/realia&CISOPTR=1146
Vernacular description Translate the description. Use complete sentences with uppercase initial word and period at end.
Pedagogical application How do you use the image in your teaching? Why did you capture this image? Describe teacher and student related activities. Use complete sentences with uppercase initial word and period at end. Examples:
      http://contentdm.nitle.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/realia&CISOPTR=1031
      http://contentdm.nitle.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/realia&CISOPTR=502
Date Date of original image capture; yyyy-mm-dd format (i.e. 2002-06-30 or, if your only know the month: 2002-06, or, if you only know the year: 2002)

Optional fields

These descriptive fields are not required under most circumstances; please familiarize yourself with them, however.

Photographer Usually leave blank. Include only if you the contributor are NOT the photographer, in the format 'Lastname, Firstname'
References Include the full URL of a related website or an MLA formatted citation of a related print work.
Contributor set name This is an optional field. Contributor may name a subset of his/her images, e.g. for 10 images of 'La Ville de Lyon' or 40 images of: 'French Architecture: Castles and Cathedrales'
Multi-view note Use this field to link groups of images that only need one full description; i.e. front view/back view of single building or monument; a series of images of "riding the metro", or a pamphlet that consists of several separately scanned pages.
  1. Do a full description of the first image in the sequence.
  2. In the Multi-view note for the first image input a code in the format: [your initials][sequence number] (i.e. ab001).
  3. For the rest of the images that link to the first, fill in only two fields: supply a very brief Title and add the corresponding Multi-view note code (e.g. ab001). Examples:
    http://contentdm.nitle.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/realia&CISOPTR=416
  4. If you have a second and third multi-view sequence link those with Multi- view note code: ab002, ab003, etc.
  5. In addition to the linking code, feel free to add any textual note you feel is necessary within the Multi-view note to alert REALIA Project staff to the proper sequencing of the linked images.
Contributor filename This is an optional field. If you wish to maintain your original filename in the REALIA database, input it here.