Contributions to the Printers' Device website are most welcome and encouraged. Although the majority of research will be undertaken by the editor of this page, your assistance will be greatly appreciated. Please first look at the Explanation of the Printers' Devices Form to see the areas of information. Not all are required; indeed, only the image is necessary and everything else can be unknown. Also, look at some of the devices already in the site. Your contribution can take a number of forms:

• Correcting factual or typographical errors
• Providing information for the Notes
• Providing information for the Usage Period
• Helping with the References
• Identifying "Unknown"
• Contributing images

It is the last that will require more than an email message. There are few requirements and they are not onerous. The required basics are:

• Grey scale (unless printed in color) JPEG of the device
• The height and width of the printed device in millimeters
• Brief bibliographic description (unless the device is on an unidentified fragment)

How the device is scanned is up to the contributor, but it is recommended that the scan be at 400-600 dpi and initially saved as a TIFF. This would be the contributors archival copy. At this time, there are no plans to store archival copies here as part of this project, but that may occur in the future. Cornell's Illustrated Book Study is an excellent source for the technical aspects of scanning illustrations. The image required for the purposes of this site is a 15% compression JPEG, resized to under 100K. As a rule of thumb, the scanned image should be 5-8 pixels per millimeter of the printed image. This can vary depending on the size of the original as long as all significant details are clearly visible. As graphic editing will be done here on the image, even if only to create a thumbnail, contributors should not feel obligated to spend overmuch time on editing; you can send a JPEG of up to 500K which will be processed here.

The digital images will have a copyright mark for the contributor, but it must be understood that the records are freely available for public use. The individual printer's device records with a separate URL may be bookmarked and even linked to any institution's cataloging record without restriction. Only if use is desired of the digitized image will permission be required from the contributor.

The bibliographic description of the source publication should be brief and based upon those in short title catalogs. It is the device that is the focus here, not the publication. The reference citation will provide the avenue to the publication for those wishing to pursue that aspect.

Any other information provided by the contributor is gladly welcomed, for the more you do, the less the editor will have to do. Please do not let a lack of resources dissuade you from contributing; the basics are enough and all other information can be supplied either by the editor or other contributors. Please note that the printer or publisher is not a required element. "Unknown" is a wonderful category and a stimulus to research.

A word of caution: the most difficult area is "Keywords." At this time, the advice is the simpler, the better. As an example, instead of trying to determine if it is a falcon or an eagle, it is best to simply use "birds." This will become very important when database searching becomes available. You must not expect everyone to know that a bird of prey in a French printer's device is most likely a falcon. The Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials is an hierarchical list; do please try to use the upper level terms. If a suitable term is not in the LCTGM, use the Library of Congress Subject Headings. As examples, LCTGM does not have Wings, Orbs, or Satyrs, which are in the LCSH.

To contribute informational material, a simple email will do. If you wish to contribute an image and information related to the image, please contact the editor first.