The Watermark Archive is designed to meet this need, and thereby to advance the central objective of the contemporary study of Greek paleography and codicology. T he electronic medium makes it possible to conduct very sophisticated searches for paper matches very easily, once the database of paper descriptions and watermark images exists. The use of contact images, which preserve more information than tracings, and the electronic medium with its many advantages for study and manipulation of data, facilitate the close comparison of papers needed to establish matches. Watermark tracings which are machine-generated also take advantage of this medium. Advantages of the Electronic Medium.
Descriptive terminology is fixed by the form for submitting paper descriptions.
This means that descriptions are reasonably consistent, and that searches can be conducted using those terms with considerable confidence that if there are any matching papers recorded in this Archive, those matching papers will be found. The search capability of the electronic medium means that any search for a matching paper or for a particular set of watermark and physical traits will generate a set of all matching examples that have been entered into this archive. Newly discovered papers and watermarks can be easily added to this archive Forms are provided here for submitting newly discovered watermarks and paper descriptions. Contact prints, together with consistently formatted paper descriptions, enable us to match papers among scattered manuscripts with much greater accuracy than has ever before been possible. All rights reserved.