COPYRIGHT FREE images/video/other media

Students and teachers alike often go first to Google images for pictures, but not all images are copyright free.  Why not go directly to a few good public domain sites? Works in the public domain may be used freely and are not protected by copyright. Here are a few such sites. Many states have digital collections of their history.

American Memory Collection - A digital record of American History from the Library of Congress. Find spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

  

Calisphere - A World of Primary Sources and more from the University of California. Designed for K-12 students and teachers.  http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/

University of Colorado Digital Library – Digital resources for educational use. https://www.cu.edu/digitallibrary/

Digital Library of Georgia – A gateway to Georgia’s history and culture. http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu

Picture History – The primary source for history online.  http://www.picturehistory.com/

U.S. Government Photos and Images – A mix of public domain (copyright free) and licensed images. Read disclaimers on each site. http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml

OpenClipArt – original free clipart and images. http://openclipart.org/

Flickr creative commons – Some Flickr contributors let you use their image if you give them credit. See various creative commons licensing agreements. http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Pics4Learning – Free, copyright friendly images for education. http://pics.tech4learning.com/

CLASSIC CAT – the free classical catalog (music). http://www.classiccat.net/

MediaFly

MEDIAFLY On Air is a free site that connects viewers to recent news of all sorts of topics.  In addition to online radio and podcasts, Mediafly lets consumers listen to their favorite podcast and radio shows from the major networks.   Go to MEDIAFLY.com and explore!

You can search by community picks, source or topic.  Here are two topics.

• Education has a variety of sites, but they do not appear to be provided by the education community. TedTalks and GrammarGirl are options, for example. 
• Technology has many popular technology shows, including GeekBeat.tv

Digital Pop-Up Book - Library Annual Report

Topeka and Shawnee County (Kansas) Public Library's Creative Staff created an online annual report, presented as a digital pop-up book. Very cool. See article by Mark Hall of CJOnline.

A how-to workshop and template would do well at any library conference! It is a great way to communicate what your library does, did, and is capable of doing. Very nice! Love the visualization. Are the Creative Staff from TSCPL.org going to share? What's next from Michael Perkins, the library's digital services supervisor?

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO OPEN DIGITAL LIBRARIES / GOOGLE BOOKS SETTLEMENT

All Day OPEN WORKSHOP on Alternative Approaches to Digital Libraries and the Google Book Settlement, 7/31/09. Harvard Law School registration is required. *
Announcement:

"The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved . What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement? By exploring these alternatives, this workshop seeks, in the end, to help inform the debate over the Settlement and its terms and to illuminate some of the key policy considerations that are at stake. Its ultimate goal is to develop a series of options and proposals that could improve on the status quo in novel ways."

*Registration is not required for remote participation.
Follow the Berkman Center on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/berkmancenter
Join the IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/berkman (requires an IRC Client such as Chatzilla)
Questions? Contact Amar Ashar at ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

Delicious Library 2

This evening, when clicking on "StumbleUpon" I found Delicious Library 2 -- a top header says: Catalog your books, movies, music, software, toys, tools, electronics, & video games. Nice look -- a "photorealistic" shelf of all your stuff. Apparently, you hold a CD, DVD, video game, book or whatever up to a webcam, and it magically reads the UPC and downloads that item’s cover and all pertinent information about it, and displays all stuff on "shelves".