Watermarking:
Watermarking digital objects is already common in some areas. Images are commonly watermarked with expressions of copyright ownership, for example. However, some repositories have experimented with adding a watermark to text documents held in their repository.
The arXiv e-Print archive (external link), for example, adds a watermark containing the date, version number and repository location into the margin of the first page of each PDF generated for the repository. See the example here, where the watermark is vertical in the left hand margin:
This watermark is also an active weblink, allowing a reader to link back to the repository record for the paper (which in this case takes you here).
Pros:
Watermarking certain types of object has been used successfully in some disciplines and repositories already, and is an effective way of unobtrusively making certain bits of metadata visible as part of the object itself. This is an outcome highly recommended by the VIF project.
There is also the potential for the creation of the watermark to be an automatic process that requires no user intervention. There has been some discussion of developing this tool which VIF hopes will lead to implementation.
In addition to being able to include any essential versioning
information, a watermark can also link to the repository record/
metadata 'splash' page.
Cons:
Possible problems could occur if the original document does not
adhere to standard templates, which could cause an overlap where the
watermark would normally go.