Watermarks in Incunabula printed in the Low Countries — Royal Library

With the Watermarks in Incunabula printed in the Low Countries (WILC) dataset, the Royal Library provides access to 16,071 watermarks from books printed between 1450 and 1501 (so-called incunables) in the Low Countries, the present Netherlands and Belgium. The WILC set consists of 16,071 images of watermarks coming from one of the 14,300 copies of the 2,229 incunable editions that have been preserved worldwide (some have been handed over in more than one copy). There are watermarks coming from books that are now scattered around the world in libraries, archives and museums. The power of the set lies in the large amount of images that all feature detailed descriptive metadata, including four geographical coordinates (length and latitudes of both the place of manufacture and preservation). The KB does this as open (culture) data: the metadata is subject to a CC0 license, and the individual objects (images of watermarks) also have a CC0 license. The metadata and digital objects in the set cover a total of 1.7 GB.