UNH recently entered into a non-exclusive agreement with Gado Images to help facilitate the licensing of some of the image copyrights owned by the university, specifically, the almost 50,000 photographic negatives that were bequeathed to UNH by famed Jewish female photographer Lotte Jacobi. The images are housed in Special Collections at UNH’s Dimond Library.
Gado provides technologies and services to digitize, manage, and monetize historical collections and makes it easier for interested parties to find the right content. The company has an established relationship with highly trafficked image licensing marketplaces such as Getty Images, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Alamy. Under this new agreement, the university provides Gado with high resolution digital scans and Gado works with the various marketplaces to license the images to consumers.
As the unit of UNH responsible for commercializing the university’s intellectual assets, UNHI has been working hard to make the images in Lotte Jacobi’s collection available to those who are interested in her work. We have licensed a number of these images for use in domestic and foreign documentaries, books, museum collections, and art shows throughout the world. The revenue received from these licenses supports the maintenance and digitalization of the collection and helps to preserve these extremely important images. However, the licenses are time consuming and marketing efforts have been restricted by limited resources. The partnership with Gado provides an alternative distribution channel that will hopefully build a more substantial revenue stream and allow UNH to scale the collection even more.
Gado is starting with a small number of scanned images as a proof of concept, and there have already been several licensed images in the first quarter, mostly small digital-only sales. UNH is planning to add additional Lotte Jocobi images to Gado’s portfolio in the coming months, along with other historic images in the university’s collections.
Annie Schwartz
Program Support Assistant
UNHInnovation
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