I finally got around to adding a Creative Commons license to this blog (see the sidebar). To celebrate, some public domain material!
[caption id="attachment_75" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="How Master Jones of Raleigh, N. C., gave his dog a practical training--He throws a neighbor\'s baby into the water to see if the dog will rescue it."][/caption]
This image, from the July 3, 1880 Illustrated Police News, is in the public domain. I scanned it myself, and therefore (as I understand existing copyright), this image can be freely circulated. Much of the material that services like ProQuest Historical Newspapers digitize is also in the public domain (nineteenth-century newspapers, for example). Indeed, they have a pretty capacious archive of Illustrated Police News, and a nice collection of one of its American equivalents, The National Police Gazette. But even though the material itself is in the public domain, the scans of that material are not; what a bummer. (If I am misunderstanding copyright, I would be happy to be corrected.)
But, by scanning my own public domain materials, I can make some minor contribution to the public domain. This fascinating image, for example, improves our understanding of Victorian methods of parenting and animal training.
[/caption]
This image, from the July 3, 1880 Illustrated Police News, is in the public domain. I scanned it myself, and therefore (as I understand existing copyright), this image can be freely circulated. Much of the material that services like ProQuest Historical Newspapers digitize is also in the public domain (nineteenth-century newspapers, for example). Indeed, they have a pretty capacious archive of Illustrated Police News, and a nice collection of one of its American equivalents, The National Police Gazette. But even though the material itself is in the public domain, the scans of that material are not; what a bummer. (If I am misunderstanding copyright, I would be happy to be corrected.)
But, by scanning my own public domain materials, I can make some minor contribution to the public domain. This fascinating image, for example, improves our understanding of Victorian methods of parenting and animal training.
