Exploring the Public Domain & Week 2 ICP Class

The Travelers’ Green Book: 1963-64 International Edition. From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. NYPL Digital Collections

How many times have you sung “Happy Birthday” in your life? Did a representative from Warner Music show up and ask you to pay  a fee?  I’m guessing not. However, until the beginning of this academic year when the song was ruled to be in the public domain, if you showed characters singing “Happy Birthday” in a TV show, film, greeting card or any media that was either public or commercial, Warner Music would have vigorously asserted its right to that material and you would need to pay for something that many assumed was just “public property.”

Last semester, I didn’t ask you to think too extensively about how you sourced images for your blogposts and projects because it was the equivalent of singing “Happy Birthday” in your home: everyone does it and rarely would a company bother itself  asserting copyright and licensing rights against students pulling images for private, educational use.

However, as we begin creating digital stories presented online for the public, we need to be much more conscious about sourcing and providing correct attribution for our images. As the weeks go on, we will be talking about appropriate image use and how to obtain permission for images. Even though you are making new things, you will be expected to know and follow the process for obtaining permissions for image use.

Just because something is “free” or in the Public Domain, doesn’t mean that you can just re-present it as your own work. When you start searching for images, do note where the image comes from, if payment would be expected for use, and how you should give correct attribution. You should familiarize yourself with the terms. Public Domain, Creative Commons, Fair Use, and Open Source.

An excellent example is the collection of almost 200,000 high resolution images that The New York Public Library just released into the public domain.  While the NYPL encourages use to use these in art, scholarship and web publishing, it still expects that we will offer proper credit to their collection. They’ve made this remarkably easy. If you go to the page for the Green Book (a guide for black travelers who needed to know safe places for food and lodging), along with that important phrase “Free to use without restriction.” you’ll be given loads of data on the image, a permalink and appropriate citations for different scholarly styles.

You should get in the habit of giving attribution for your images, even if they are ones you own (more on this in another post).

ASSIGNMENTS:

FILL OUT the scheduling form I sent out via email (Also in Courseworks).

SKIM the proposals submitted last semester (in Courseworks. You can find individual proposals here and a complete packet here.)

READ carefully  the two proposals assigned to you. (See Project Review Schedule In Week 2 folder on Courseworks)

PREPARE to present your project (3-5 minutes)

EXPLORE the site for the NYC’s Gilded Ages Website

PICK UP your MTA card from the English Department main office (Barnard Hall 417)

CLASS PLAN

Bradley review of NYC’s Gilded Ages (45 mins)

Sharing of student projects

• Group 1: (Michelle, Danielle, Nadia)
• Break        (10 mins)
• Group 2:   (Kiani, Dania, Clarke)
• Group 3:   (Amanda, Gabby, Nicole)
• Group 4:   (Nicole, Yemi, Sophia)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

–I will be in the ICP lounge/lobby for about 45 minutes before class if you need to speak to me.

–There’s been a call for us to give a name to this practice of reading/interpreting the world like Ntozake– Is it Zakology? Shange-ology? Shang-ism? Are we Zakettes? Let’s talk about it in the comments!