• the world wide web will be the primary means of access to digitized emblems
• access will be as far as possible free and open to all, although the copyright concerns of libraries and individual owners of emblem books will need to be respected
• graphic files will employ the JPEG format, with Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) serving for archival purposes
• the description and identification of the pictorial motifs in graphic images (the picturae) will best be done using the standardized controlled vocabulary of ICONCLASS to classify image data and facilitate theme and motif searches.[39]
• Extensible Markup Language (XML) will offer the preferred means of tagging textual content and all relevant structural components
• Open Archives Initiative (OAI) will offer the preferred means of cross-database searching
• the use of the Unicode character set, either UTF-8 or 16, is a desideratum for digitizing texts to ensure conformity, particularly with regard to the encoding of the special characters that are common in many non-English languages. It is recognized, however, that not all database systems support Unicode
• something close to the so-called SPINE, at which Stephen Rawles has toiled so hard, so passionately, and so persuasively, will offer a model for the encoding of an optimum set of database categories to record the core content and metadata of different digitization projects.[40]
• there will be rigorous attention given to bibliographic data (to some extent this is a matter subsumed within the SPINE)
• most websites to date have provided full or partial English language versions of instructions, introductory commentary, navigational pointers, and the like, and there would appear to be a consensus that for searching mechanisms it is desirable to create concordances that match any non-English keywords with English equivalents.
• the OpenEmblem Portal at the University of Illinois will be both a “Shallow Portal” providing information and links to a variety of resources of value to emblem scholars but it will also be a so-called “Deep Portal” that will provide the principal common means of access to a core of material within different digitization projects hosted on servers that are scattered worldwide.[41]
• work on digitizing more emblem books will continue. Greater care than in the past will be made to avoid duplication
• where individual projects have not to date included certain fields of information, consideration will be given to adding this additional data in the future so that there can be greater uniformity among projects[42]
• participants will attempt to use open source software that can be implemented on multiple hardware platforms. Constraints imposed by commercial interests or specific platform requirements are to be avoided.
• full texts should be scanned, their texts made searchable through transcripts of the original and through modernised transcripts. Ideally, texts should be lemmatized as a further aid to searching.
• a display or gallery of clickable thumbnails of each digitized page appears to be a desideratum, as can be observed on the Dutch Love Emblem site, the Arkyves site, the Glasgow French emblem site, and the HAB German emblem book site. However, though such a feature may be desirable, it is not essential as a navigational tool.