Public Domain

This was a really interesting (as well as frustrating) project.  I definitely learned more about research, particularly image research.  I better understand how to find out if an image is under copyright or not whereas before I was always wary about using images because I felt like I could never be sure what was legally usable and not; after this project I can see a license like GNU and not think "yeah, that probably means I can't use it."  This project also allowed for an inside look at what image researchers (and almost a little of what fact checkers) do.  I now know that is not something I ever want to go into. :D

I feel that the whole purpose of assigning this project was to avoid pure lecture about Public Domain but throw us into the thick of it.  There really are some things that just can't be efficiently taught without any hands on involvement, and I know that, at least for me, I wouldn't be able to remember half as much of what we have discussed regarding copyright and public domain if it weren't for this project.  We also got familiar with these various digital archives.  Digital archives can be really overwhelming, but after doing this project I think most of us could return to these archives if we needed to without spending an extra hour or two just attempting to figure the site out.  I liked that we searched for public domain images instead of just whatever images you can find and cite; it really makes a difference in the type of research we do.  Also, as I already said, being hands-on like that does efficently teach us more about copyright and different possible licensing.

This project may have been a bit of a pain (I never knew searching for images could be so difficult!), but it really did help me to better understand the various aspect related to the project that we have been talking about in class.  So I guess there is the silver lining.