Wikipedians are an integral part of the CC Community, and as a key Wikipedian in Wiki Loves Women, WikiAfrica, and Wiki Loves Africa, Isla Haddow-Flood’s work is a crux for that community.

Isla’s accomplishments with these projects are self-evident: a Wikipedian since 2011, she has been integral in illuminating the content gaps and voices of women, Africans, and other marginalized groups within Wikipedia. As the former project manager for WikiAfrica and current volunteer, Isla’s work seeks to create content for all Wikipedians around the world and raise up the voices of the many, rather than the few.

Why is it important for more women to be involved with Wikipedia? What kinds of benefits does a more balanced gender dynamic bring to Wikipedia?

A lot of research has been done into the systemic bias behind the skewed content on Wikipedia. This is especially profound in relation to both content about Africa and content about women. Only 16% of the biographies on the English Wikipedia are about women and on English Wikipedia alone there are, on average,100 times more geotagged articles relating to France than articles similarly geotagged to the continental space of Africa.

There has been similar research done on Wikipedia contributors. The demographic of voluntary contributors has obvious implications on the makeup of the content, and the earlier systemic bias of the content makes sense because only 25% of edits to subjects about the Sub-Saharan region come from within that region and that less than 20% of (all) Wikipedia contributors are female. One analysis of content shows that only 12% of biographies in sub-saharan Africa are about women.

When the the collective impact of content and contribution gaps from women and Africans are combined, it creates not just a gap but an abyss. Women in Africa are some of the most marginalized groups in the world and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is meant to reflect the knowledge of all geographies, genders, interests, cultures and perspectives equally and this is not currently happening. The status quo will remain the same until people across Africa, especially women, see themselves and their reality truly and truthfully reflected – until they see they have an equal standing in the world and that they can be part of the global conversation and they see that Wikipedia is relevant to them, only then, will they can contribute their knowledge.

Why are you involved with Wiki Loves Women, WikiAfrica, and Wiki Loves Africa? What kinds of projects or events have been the most exciting to organize?

I have been a registered Wikipedian since 2011 and have been involved in supporting the WikiAfrica movement. WikiAfrica is an international project that encourages individuals, interested groups and organisations to create, expand and enhance online content about Africa.

As part of this movement I have partnered with people passionate about the Open Movement, including Florence Devouard, Iolanda Pensa, and Kelsey Wiens on a number of innovative projects in collaboration with several organisations. The interventions have been aimed at activating communities, capacitating volunteers, and encouraging the ‘liberation’ of content from organizations across Africa on to Wikipedia.
Wiki Loves Africa is an annual photographic competition where people contribute photos or media of that year’s specific theme. This year is Music and Dance running from the 1st December 2016 to 31st January 2017. We’ve previously covered Cuisine (2014) and Cultural fashion and adornment (2015). Photography is one of the easiest ways to contribute to Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons. It requires a good eye, an amazing subject, and an understanding of Creative Commons licences. It has been a successful project that sprung from the belief that there is so much to celebrate on a continent that is so visually and culturally rich.

The Wiki Loves Women project seeks to fill two major subject gaps – women and Africa. These gaps exist in content on these two themes, but also in terms of participation in the editorial level. It currently takes place in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut.

What compels you to keep doing this work?

Because it is important, and because I love it! For a number of challenging reasons, Africa just doesn’t play in the same knowledge space that other regions do. This has to change, and with technology, it can. To do this,

It is important for people from Africa to tell their own stories: changing the narrative, shaking up stereotypes and sharing what they want to think, and how they want to feel, about being African.

And one way to do this is to share our complex, amorphous reality, both past and present, with the world on Wikipedia.

How does Wiki Loves Women and Wiki Loves Africa bring the offline online?

Both projects work at developing the community of volunteers around the content through training, events and contests.Wiki Loves Women has an amazingly varied array of events offline and online and interventions that the teams runs in the four countries that it is currently active in. You can see the range through the blog posts that are featured on our website.
Every year for Wiki Loves Africa, we reinforce the outreach of the project by supporting focus countries. These countries introduce and train interested individuals to contribute by arranging launch events, photo-hunts, upload, and prize-giving events.

For both projects it is about developing people’s passion about the world they live in, their immediate surroundings, traditions and issues. It is also about widening their understanding of copyright and copyleft – and introducing them to the Open Movement, specifically to Creative Commons to provide a slow yet fun, exciting, and social immersion into the world of Wikipedia. We work closely with Wikimedia volunteers and Usergroups, who in turn work with the CC affiliates and Open Street Maps (where possible) across Africa to ensure that we are all helping each other, and in some cases our activities have supported affiliate development and growth in countries, such as in Ethiopia.

How do you work with varying connectivity as well as offline community building for an online community?

The issue about connectivity and data is a very real one. We have come up with a solution, WikiFundi, that is funded by the Orange Foundation and currently being developed. It should be rolling out to the community in early 2017. WikiFundi is an offline editable environment that provides a similar experience to editing Wikipedia online. WikiFundi allows for training on, and contribution to, Wikipedia when technology, access and electricity outages fail or are not available at all.

To celebrate the launch of WikiFundi, in early 2017 there will be the WikiChallenge African Schools that encourages schools in eight countries in Africa to compete by writing Wikipedia articles about their city, town, village, suburb or local landmark using the WikiFundi software. The competition is a fun introduction to writing Wikipedia articles and will add information about Africa to the global online encyclopedia. Wikipacks, that includes WikiFundi and training resources and information on Wikipedia and Creative Commons, will also be distributed to the Wikimedia volunteer groups in early 2017.

Get involved!

Wiki Loves Women

• Website: www.wikiloveswomen.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WikiLovesWomen
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen
• Goethe-Institut page: www.goethe.de/wikiloveswomen
• On Wikipedia:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Loves_Women

Wiki Loves Africa

• Website: http://wikilovesafrica.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wikilovesafrica
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wikilovesafrica
• On Wikimedia Commons:
  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2016

WikiAfrica Movement links

• Website: http://www.wikiafrica.net/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WikiAfrica
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiAfrica
• WikiFundi: http://www.wikifundi.org/

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A more in-depth profile of the Blender Institute will be released in the forthcoming book Made with Creative Commons.

How did this film come together? What were its origins?

At the Blender Institute studio, we’ve been making CC BY-licensed films since 2007. The first short films we made were mostly crowdfunded via the pre-sale of DVDs that offered the film itself, along with all of the assets and software that someone would need to remake the entire film. This was a huge success… we’ve always used our productions—and the revenues we derive from them—to improve Blender, our open source 3D creation tool.

In 2014 we decided to drop this funding model. DVDs didn’t sell well anymore, nor is it very practical to use for data sets. Instead we began uploading everything we made to a website—all the films, all of the sources for them, and 100 hours of training materials we’d made over the past several years. This is what we call the Blender Cloud. For just $10 per month subscribers can get access to everything on the site under CC BY, and we use the subscription revenues to produce new content and film continuously.

Caminandes Llamigos was the third short film we produced thanks to Blender Cloud subscriptions. As usual, the goal with this project was to further improve Blender but also to have a large collection of CC BY content and tutorials to share with users online. People love funny films, and it’s a big inspiration to learn how to make them from the makers directly.

The Caminandes series is based on director Pablo Vazquez’ home country – Patagonia. Pablo loves funny crazy animals as well as short cartoons in the well known American ’50s tradition.

How long did it take to make? What was the process of making it happen?

Writing and storyboarding started in October of last year. Production started in November and lasted 3 months. In February, we spent a month wrapping up the project by producing additional content, including making-of materials, asset downloads, and tutorials.

Why do you choose the specific CC licenses you use for your projects?

We almost exclusively use CC BY and CC 0 for our works. Offering our films and their source materials under a noncommercial license was never something we considered, as doing so makes sharing content with serious artists and professionals impossible or confusing.

Open licenses are essential for sharing our films and their source material. CC BY and CC 0 make the asset collections usable for other projects. Also, for the kinds of training that we want to encourage, it’s essential to give students the right to build on top of our work in order to make new works, share those works, and show them in public.

What do you hope people will do with this film? How do you want them to interact with it?

Sharing is caring! As artists and makers, we want people to share our work so that lots of people see it. Past versions of  Caminandes were copied to the Disney Channel with big success! The Caminandes characters are becoming quite well known now, and people have started using them in unexpected ways. We are happy about this.

That said, looking back at 10 years of sharing animation film under CC, we are surprised that people haven’t been using the assets to create entirely new episodes or versions—and certainly not in the quality and quantity we did. You might think that “giving it all away” would cause you to lose everything because your great artwork now can be duplicated and used by everyone. Instead, we learned something else. Even when you share everything, including all your original sources, it still takes a lot of talent and skill and time and budget to make this sort of work. There’s no value for us in enforcing strict copyright limitations on the work.

The post Blender Institute’s Ton Roosendaal on open licensing and artistic success appeared first on Creative Commons.

I have been a fan of Marisa Anderson’s music since discovering her albums at the legendary Chapel Hill radio station WXYC, where my show usually ran from from 4-8AM.

At 4 in the morning in a windowless studio, the title of Anderson’s 2011 release “The Golden Hour” seemed apropos. I would listen to her virtuosic, dreamy fingerpicking through my headphones, fuzzy around the edges but always precise; Anderson’s playing is euphoric and timeless, grounded in the best of traditions while reaching its branches toward future plateaus. Feeling her music tangibly in the studio during those rapturous early morning hours, I felt the kind of intimacy with Anderson that only the best folk musicians can inspire, evoking the “high lonesome sound” that touches the listener at her core.

While Anderson is a successful independent artist who works with a variety of record labels including Mississippi and Chaos Kitchen, she has also worked with radio stations aligned with Creative Commons, such as WFMU and KBOO community radio in Portland. Anderson uses her work with these stations to augment her catalog, releasing “community-owned songs” for free on the internet, including the 2013 Elizabeth Cotten split 7”, released under a BY NC-ND license.

Anderson’s music can be found on the Free Music Archive, on KBOO, and at a record store near you. Anderson is currently on tour through Europe and the United States and generously answered these questions by email.

You are a student of American music as well as a musician yourself. How has your scholarship shaped the way you play and think about music and your craft?

In many cases when we say “American music” we are actually talking about music that arose in the southeastern United States as a result of the cultural collisions of the past 500 years. The melodies are hybrids, the songs were passed orally, and the words adapted to reflect the singer’s situation or to comment on current events of the time. This is particularly true for many religious and patriotic songs where the words were basically propaganda attached to a melody that belonged to another song.  For example, compare “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to “John Brown’s Body,” or “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” to “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye.”

I think of myself as existing along a continuum, as being caught up in a conversation that moves backward and forward through time. Tradition is what we glean from the past and what we pass onto the future.

Recording technology froze the folk process and tricked us into thinking that songs have fixed identities. I like to think that I’m picking up a conversational thread from another time, shining my own light on it, and passing it on into the future.

In 2013 you released an album of traditional and public domain songs. While most of these tunes are well-trodden territory for folk musicians, your renditions push on the boundaries of interpretation, creating a rich soundscape while still maintaining the songs’ integrity. Why did you decide to release this album? What compelled you to interpret these songs in this way? Why public domain and traditional songs in particular?

In 2013 I was the artist-in-residence at KBOO community radio in Portland, Oregon. As KBOO is a community-owned radio station, for my residency project I decided to make a record of community-owned songs, or in other words, public domain songs.

I chose to address songs that were already well known standards because I wanted listeners to approach the recordings with some degree of familiarity, to invite the audience into the project rather than use it as a platform to display some obscure knowledge.

I believe that common things in the world around us hold deep surprises, and that looking for the new often involves looking at the old.

Using public domain material freed up the creative side of recording because my responsibility was to arrange and interpret music rather than compose it. I was able to dive deeply into the sonics of the record. This became really important because I was making instrumental versions of songs that contain lyrics and stories that are very familiar to many people. The melodies and chord changes for the songs I chose are simple and repetitious. The major challenge of the record lay in how to make compelling renditions of these simple forms without losing the essential identity of each song.  In other words, how was I to convey the emotional impact of the lyrics without singing, and without significant modification of the melody? I was looking for ways to serve the songs and enrich the melodies when I started working with more diffuse and textural sounds to fill out the emotional palette.

“Battle Hymn of the Republic medley” from Live at WFMU on Shrunken Planet April 28th, 2012 by Marisa Anderson. Released: 2012. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

You often work with independent radio stations like KBOO and WFMU to produce new music under Creative Commons licenses as well as release your work with traditional licensing arrangements under several labels including Mississippi and Chaos Kitchen. Can you talk about what sharing your work looks like in this context? How do you find inspiration in these two different modes of production?

Making and distributing a record is a physical process, with associated costs. Many people are willing to pay for the artifact, or even for a download. Today, when most music is accessible for free, I see these purchases as a modern form of the patronage system and I deeply appreciate people who choose to support my work in that way.

My records are largely improvised and often the version of a song that gets put onto the record is simply one of many versions. The songs change every time I play them and it’s nice to have an avenue for people to hear the evolution of a song that started as an improvisation, became fixed onto a record, and is released into the world through performance.

I appreciate that each arrangement has its value. I don’t feel ownership of a performance in the same way as I do for the actual composition or the physical artifact.  A performance, by its very nature, is a shared event which feels natural to me to release more freely into the world.

What is it like to be a successful independent artist in 2016? Where do you find inspiration for your work? How do you find distribution in the age of the streaming service?

I feel like the luckiest person in the world that I can pay my bills by playing guitar and sharing what I create. It’s a tremendous privilege and one that involves quite a bit of strategy to stay afloat. I’ve found that the key for my survival as an independent artist is threefold: I keep my overhead low both personally and professionally and I do as much as I can for myself, which means at different times I’ve had to be my own booking agent, recording engineer, tour manager, etc. I also make sure that my income comes from multiple sources such as record sales, commissioned work, and performance fees.

I find inspiration in so many places! Sometimes inspiration comes in very concrete forms, from current or historical events or the juxtaposition of a modern viewpoint with a song from a different era.  At other times it’s very abstract: I often respond to natural processes, dreams or memories. I tend to work through aspects of my personal history through composition. I also can get really inspired by the quality of a sound, or by searching for a sound that just feels right.

Probably I don’t think enough about distribution. I have a few different methods that work well enough to get the music into the world and I just trust that the music will find its way to the ears of those who need it. I know how much I need to make in order to survive, and once that amount is secured, I’m a bit lazy. I’d rather be making music than chasing every last dime!

Would you consider releasing more of your work under Creative Commons? What benefits and drawbacks do you see with sharing legally on the Web?

I’m sure that more of my work will be released under Creative Commons or other free licensing structures. I like that more people can share in the music, and that anyone who want to trace my process or the evolution of one of my songs have an avenue to do so.

A friendly reminder: Our partners at the Free Music Archive are raising funds to stay afloat. If you are one of the 40 million people who benefitted from their work this year alone, please consider donating. You’ll ensure that this important project lives on (and get a cool shirt!)

The post Musician Marisa Anderson looks for the new in the old appeared first on Creative Commons.

The artist Patrick Hochstenbach is a comic artist, programmer, and digital architect at University of Ghent libraries. Check out more of his work on Instagram and Twitter.

The post Giving away your art for FREE again?? appeared first on Creative Commons.

While it will probably not be the next Netflix hit original, the twelve minutes of Creative Commons licensed content that make up “Meridian” will have a major impact on the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) by sharing resources to make the open source standard Interoperable Master Format (IMF) more usable across the web. The content is experimental and strange, but when developers get their hands on it, these twelve minutes may change the future of content distribution forever.

As Variety writes, “Netflix is using a Creative Commons license for the release of “Meridian,” which is new for an industry that isn’t used to sharing a lot of resources. ‘They are in the business of exploiting content, not of giving it away,’ [Chris Fetner of Netflix] said.”

What this means is that in this global movie business, the SMPTE will find it easier to release subtitles and locally specific content for a global audience, releasing content faster and more accurately than ever before. Developers can access the Meridian codex or work with Netflix’s hundreds of open source projects to create a better IMF standard with the company.

This usage of the license is exactly the kind of usage we hope for: a more agile workflow through open licensing and a spirit of cooperation that creates better technical standards. By using the CC license for this project, Netflix is saying lights, camera, action to the dream of a more innovative world.

The post Lights, camera, web standards! Netflix releases algorithmic film “Meridian” under Creative Commons appeared first on Creative Commons.

The interdisciplinary artist Caroline Woolard engages with political economy and activism through radically innovative collaborative projects. Through “existing commoning projects like gifting, lending, borrowing, and sharing of land, labor, and capital,” Woolard’s work confronts the economic precarity of the present moment through a variety of media.

As a “cultural producer whose interdisciplinary work facilitates social imagination at the intersection of art, urbanism, and political economy,” Woolard’s work is collaborative, confrontational, and cooperative, drawing on a variety of experiences and voices.

Woolard’s newest work, “Of Supply Chains,” will be released this month on the project’s website.

How do you understand “the commons”?

I define “the commons” as shared resources that are managed by and for the people who use those resources. Creative Commons does an excellent job of bringing the Free Culture Movement to everyday life, as image rights are now understood in relationship to the commons. That said, I believe Silvia Federici when she writes that most things we call “commons” today are in fact “transitional commons” because in a true commons, the collective management of resources would be respected by, and even surpass, state and federal law.

Can you discuss the use of political economies in your work and how it relates to the concept of the commons?

If “the commons” refers to the ways in which people share and manage resources together, then the commons is always a political, and economic, concept. Historically, the commons have been enclosed upon by state governance and by privatization. Today, the commons are enclosed upon by neoliberalism, what cultural theorist Leigh Claire La Berge describes as “the private capture of public wealth”. It is my hope that my art and design work can support existing commoning practices like the gifting, lending, borrowing, and sharing of land, labor, and capital. While artists who represent commoning in paintings or photographs might provide necessary space for reflection about the commons, in my work I employ one of two strategies: 1) co-creating living spaces for commoning, or 2) making objects and artworks for existing commons-based organizations. In other words, I try to support the commons, rather than represent the commons.

Because I aim to communicate across social spheres, I make multi-year, research-based, site-specific projects that circulate in contemporary art institutions as well as in urban development, critical design, and social entrepreneurship settings. Though I am often cited as a socially engaged artist, I consider myself to be a cultural producer whose interdisciplinary work facilitates social imagination at the intersection of art, urbanism, and political economy.

I create installations and social spaces for encounters with fantasies of cooperation. Police barricades become beds. Money is erased in public. A clock ticks for ninety-nine years. Public seats attach to stop sign posts. Cafe visitors use local currency. Office ceilings hold covert messages. Ten thousand students attend classes by paying teachers with barter items. Statements about arts graduates are read on museum plaques. My work is research-based and site-specific. I alter objects to call forth new norms, roles, and rules. A street corner, a community space, a museum, an office, or a school become sites for collective reimagining.

To make this shift from object to group, I concern myself with duration and political economy. When I source materials, invite joint-work, share or deny decision-making power, and shape future markets for each work, a community of practice emerges. Experience becomes a criterion of knowledge.

To the conventional labels of Title, Author(s), Materials, Dimensions, Date, and Provenance, I add Duration, forms of Property, Labor, Transactions, Enterprise, and Finance. Objects become materializations of collective debate; entry points for encounters with fantasies of cooperation.

The objects I make cannot be disentangled from their economic and social lives. My Work Dress is available for barter only. My Statements increase in price according to student loan rates. Artists Report Back is made by BFAMFAPhD, a group that accepts community contributions. I understand art as mode of inquiry that expands beyond exhibition and toward life cycle; from display to production, consumption, and surplus allocation. I begin each project with an invitation. I facilitate an experience. A group gathers. I share and develop leadership. The project becomes a group effort, and the objects multiply. The objects are known in the group and shown much later.

You often work collaboratively with other artists. Do you see collaboration as essential to your process? How did you come to that conclusion?

I often work collaboratively because it allows me to refine my ideas in debate and in encounters with difference – difference of experience, of perspective, of values. I believe that a diversity of opinions strengthens projects because collaborators are challenged to confront their individual assumptions and either come to agreement as a group or make space to consent to individual expression or dissensus.

In collaboration, we often take time to speak about our individual and collective approaches to allocating time and money in projects. As collaborators attempt to agree upon which resources to share, collaboration becomes a conversation about political economy. We often ask: Which resources – time, money, space – are most important to us right now? How will we share the resources we accumulate together? Who has more time, space, or money in the group, and which institutions uphold this reality? By practicing shared work and shared decision making in a collaborative project, an economy of shared time and resources emerges. Practitioners of collaboration also become practitioners of solidarity economies, looking at shared livelihoods as always already part of shared production.

Money and debt is a loaded topic for artists, and yet you face debt and economic precarity head on in projects like “BFAMFAPHD.” How did that project come about? Why did you decide to take on that topic?

In the classroom, arts educators confront the socially idealized occupation of the cultural producer and the frequent disavowal of a relationship between cultural production and the contemporary political economy. It is my aim to articulate existing economies of cultural production as well as plausible futures of cooperation in art. I do this in my teaching, scholarship, and independent work. Most recently, my co-authored articles (On the Cultural Value Debate) and teaching tools (Of Supply Chains) speak to these concerns. In Of Supply Chains, co-authored with Susan Jahoda and co-designed with Emilio Reynaldo Martinez Poppe, a recent graduate of Cooper Union, we write:

“We aim to articulate the relationship between art making, pedagogy, and political economy. We believe that practices of collaboration and solidarity economies are foundational for contemporary visual arts, design, and new media education. ” Our text, workbook, and game are online this month. For now, you can see an early version of our game here.

You have described NYCREIC as “creative commons for land.” Can you elaborate on that statement?

Just as Creative Commons provides a legal framework for authors to easily share their intellectual property, I believe that we need an entity to provide legal frameworks for land owners to share their land easily. This is what I would call a “Creative Commonwealth.” The New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative, and so many initiatives related to community land trusts, could be considered examples of projects that would utilize the Creative Commonwealth framework, if it existed. Janelle Orsi at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, is working on something of this nature with the Agrarian Trust.

How do you see investment in affordable physical space as essential to a commons?

Since co-founding and co-directing OurGoods.org and TradeSchool.coop in 2008 to enable resource sharing, I’ve seen how solidarity economy platforms build resilience and mutual aid — often for those of us on the privileged side of the digital divide. I’ve also seen that online platforms are not enough. All people need affordable space, so that they can take risks and fail. Where will we meet to swap or share goods and services without affordable space? Ensuring affordable space is the only way creativity and innovation can occur. And so I started thinking: How might we as artists utilize the strengths of a networked information era to cooperatively finance, acquire, and manage space? What can artists do to help ensure affordable space and reduce displacement?

You’ve used open licensing in a variety of projects like “Queer Rocker” and “Origin of the World Dress.” Why did you decide to open source your work? Have there been any surprising outcomes?

The Queer Rocker is an example of what I call a Free/Libre/Open Source Systems and Art project. I made the designs, files, and assembly process for the Queer Rocker available for use and modification because I learn by doing, and by uniting research with action. I want to furnish gathering spaces with objects that are as imaginative as the conversations that occur in those spaces. I want to contribute to an economy of social justice, solidarity, sustainability, and cooperation. I hope to add spaces of reflection and healing to social movements, so many of which are, at present, focused on immediate protest and progress. Many students, activists, and grassroots organizations cannot afford to purchase furniture, but they may have time to create things with the materials around them.

My aim with open source projects is that through communal production and alteration, a radical politics will emerge; a politics of cooperation.

The post A politics of cooperation: Caroline Woolard on free culture, fine art, and everyday life appeared first on Creative Commons.

Photographer Carol Highsmith has donated her life’s work of tens of thousands of photos to the Library of Congress during her decades long career. Originally trained as an architectural photographer, Highsmith embarked on an ambitious project to photograph every American state in the 1980s, traveling up to ten months a year across the country to photograph small towns, big cities, roadside attractions, and everything in between. Highsmith’s photographs have appeared in films and television as well as in books, gallery exhibits, and even on a postage stamp. In 2009, Highsmith was chosen as one of four women highlighted as part of the Library of Congress’s Women’s History Month profiles. Highsmith has been in the news lately due to her lawsuit regarding Getty Images’s use of her images.

Highsmith’s project predates our work as Creative Commons, but her work is very much in the spirit of our community. By removing copyright restrictions from her photographs, Highsmith is engaged in the important work of growing a robust commons built on gratitude and usability; her singular archive at the Library of Congress is a testament to one woman’s passion and generosity. In this interview with CC, Highsmith shared some of her favorite photographs and stories from the road, her inspirations, and why she has hope in a new generation of innovation.

Over your career you’ve chosen to give away a lot of your work to the commons. Why is that? Can you talk about why you decided to share your work, and why in particular with the Library of Congress?

I am following in the footsteps of a woman named Frances Benjamin Johnston. She worked at the turn of the last century, and her photographs are kind of the cornerstone of the Library of Congress prints and photographs division. She was an architectural photographer like I am but she also did people and other things, also like I do.

I thought it was such a good idea, that it makes sense for me to share my work. There is no better place for preservation than the Library of Congress, so I decided to follow in her footsteps and I’ve never looked back. I’ve traveled America for 35 to 40 years now…  I thought it would be a good idea to have a collection where someone knew what they were doing and cared about what things looked like and to give that to the people of the world.

Film is almost gone, and over time, will digital move on as well? Will we have a record of our country? The LOC has images from early portraits taken in America, 176 years ago to what I’m shooting now, so my collection makes their collection richer. It is considered the most historic photographic collection on earth and I’m honored and humbled that I’m in that collection.

Did you always imagine that the photos would be widely available, or did you think of it initially as a physical archive?

When I started giving, I wanted to give something that wouldn’t sit for years before it got scanned (at the time I was giving film.) We decided that I would make prints, because at that time scanning was not a common thing. As it became easier for me to scan, then I started scanning my own work. Finally, I gave a very large swath of my 4×5 collection, the cream of it, scanned on a very sophisticated scanner. I have always had my hand in it because I’ve always felt that it was extremely important that if I was going to give, that I needed the images to be up sooner rather than years and years from now.

The other turning point was when I decided that I should scan my own work so people could use them now in addition to donating them to the Library of Congress. That was extremely important to me and I’m very glad I did it.

It’s important to me to bring quality to the map so that these images can be used for hundreds of years. Now, obviously technology is going to change, but as long as I’m on the edge of technology, it’s a good thing for everyone who’s going to use it.

Have there been any surprising outcomes you’ve seen from working with the Library of Congress?

Well, I am very honored that [the Library of Congress] is holding my hand.

I came up with the idea [to do long term studies of states] around 2008– I was traveling around America doing books for Random House for years, and I would always race through towns and I wanted to stay longer and do more. One day I came up with the idea that maybe if I found funding, it would help me stay longer, and I could photograph more thoroughly. I went to the Library of Congress to see if there was a way I could raise some funds for me to actually go out across America and rather than just catch the best of a city or a town or a rural area that I actually stay for a while and try to do interiors and exteriors and really research it. [After my first project in Alabama,] I realized what a difference that made when I could actually take my time. I could be there when it wasn’t raining!

I was a little nervous about it at the very beginning because I didn’t know [Alabama] very well, but it turned out that I love the state and I learned so much. I gave about 4,000 or 5,000 images of Alabama to the Library of Congress and I think they started looking at me differently as well and saw that I was really serious about what I wanted to do.

You’ll go to a state and you’ll donate 4,000 or 5,000 images. How do you choose those images? Is it everything you’ve taken?

Not by a long shot! If I’m donating 4,000 images I’ve probably taken 50,000. I can take and take and take, work and work and work. The most important thing is that I give them the best. Everything has to be scanned and color corrected, and metadata has to go on it. It was a tremendous amount of work, but we set up all the systems, and I realized how valuable it was. People from the state can use them, people from all over the world can use them. [They also put out a collection of my born digital images] of the Library of Congress and we started to realize the value of crisp and clear digital imaging. They still have those on display today, which I’m very happy about… The building is just gorgeous.

You photograph a lot of buildings and places, but you also photograph a lot of people. You mentioned that the people of Alabama, for example, can use your photographs. Can you talk about some of the people you’ve met and as well as interesting uses of your photographs?

I’m a little untethered to it because I get a lot of requests for photos via email, and I’m glad for that. I’m happy to let people use them. My images have been used for television (like House of Cards) and in all sorts of other places. These images can be used as long as they credit me, that’s fine, or if they don’t charge because I’m not charging and the Library of Congress doesn’t charge.

I have met a tremendous amount of people, as you can imagine, particularly in small towns. Yesterday I was in Colorado, and I met a Japanese farmer who has been very successful. To learn his story was fascinating! The only state that would accept interned Japanese people was Colorado, and he started farming, and he’s been tremendously successful. I was thrilled to photograph him… It is really the small towns that give me the thrill, I must admit. I photograph people all the time because I realized that if I was just doing architecture, that would be a shame because there are people who live in those buildings and they use those buildings.

Roadside America remains a particular focus for you. What have you seen that has changed in the past few years in these small towns and on the roadside?

In 1984 I started really traveling seriously and I’ve been in towns where they just whizz by and the rotary sign is hanging from a thread, which makes me sad…

Two lane highways, or what I call disappearing America, like wooden barns, are falling apart and disappearing, but time marches on. This is my time and I’m recording it.

Across America I have seen that a lot of towns are starting to realize the importance of historic architecture. So yes, some of America is worse, but a lot of America is better. Some of the small towns are hanging by a thread, but many others have picked themselves up and moved on. There’s a lot of suffering towns with closed stores, but a lot of other towns that have reinvented themselves by fixing the stores and making them different, bringing people back downtown… I’ve been in towns where they’ve lost a lot, but there’s a lot of innovation going on around the country—it’s just so thrilling to me because I record everything. For young people to move into these places, it’s fabulous.

So you’re seeing a Renaissance of downtown, you’re saying?

I really have, yes. Where downtowns were kind of passe and people would go to the suburbs, a lot of downtowns have changed, and it’s where you want to go! It’s where the good food and movies and theaters have been restored. It’s fascinating and wonderful that it’s where people congregate.

What kinds of spaces do you take the most inspiration from?

I’m in an industry that’s kind of common – photography – and at that point America was kind of common… Well, I thought it was fascinating and I can’t really say that I just like certain parts.

I have just finished Colorado and Wyoming, to die for states… and I’m on my way to the midwest– Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio. It will all be different– I may not look out and see mountains of magnitude, but I’ll look out and see other spaces that will be fascinating because America is fascinating. It’s a little bit of an out of body experience for me because I sometimes don’t realize how important my collection is in the sense that it’s showcasing our country. When I’m out doing it, I’m just out doing it!
I just love this country and I love all of it. As gorgeous as Colorado and Wyoming are, I could stand in a cornfield in Iowa on a clear day and just love it because it’s all part of who we are. I can meet just as many fascinating people as I can in Iowa as I can cowboys and cowgirls in Colorado or Wyoming. We’re all Americans, and we’re fascinating. It’s a fascinating country, so I don’t have a favorite, I’m just moved by it all. I’ll have been out in America ten months this year, which is more than we’ve been home, but it’s just that important to me to capture it.

My last question has to do with gratitude and sharing. At Creative Commons, one of our focuses is on how a culture of gratitude and sharing is “essential to a more equitable and accessible world.” How does gratitude move you to do your work, and how have you instilled a sense of gratitude in your photography?

There are a lot of very, very good images online, but if we show our cornfields and make them shine, people are going think we’re pretty special, and we are–that’s the whole point. So if I can share this and go into a small town and share these images of their town, then they can use them too. This is how it comes around and goes around as well.

When I was in Trinidad, CO this week, for instance, they went out of their way to welcome me and to show me things, and now they can have those images and use them and people around the world can see what Colorado looks like. Colorado not just the purple mountain majesty, it’s also 1/3 plains! Do people know that?

By showing us, the people in the fields, the farmers, the mountain climbers, then people can really see us. They can realize that we’re all all here on earth together and that we have a lot in common.

It doesn’t make me special because I share them because it’s really not about me, it’s about them.

They’re showcased in the Library of Congress, the library of magnitude, and I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world where people can download images like this. The Library of Congress is also sharing in kind by offering this service, which is why I’m so happy to be aligned with them, to be part of their family. The towns have gone out of their way for me to show me their best–I’ve been able to capture it, come back, put metadata to it, color correct it and make sure it’s good, the way it should be, and then it goes to the Library of Congress and they do a lot of work to get it up and then it’s there for thousands of years. How can any of us lose on this? And it’s for the world to see, for the world to see what we look like–that’s wonderful.

I photographed a carousel last night that was more than 100 years old. Will that last? Will that be here 500 years from now? Will we, as time goes on, all look the same? I don’t know. It’s not for me to know. I know that I marvel at Dorothea Lange’s photographs and Frances Benjamin Johnson’s photographs and Ansel Adams. I’m in with all those collections, and I’m hoping to carry on their legacy.

What is America? It’s a million things, from small towns to rural areas to huge cities. I was very lucky (if you can call it that) to catch the World Trade Center two months before it fell. I caught it on 4×5 film from the air and it’s probably one of the most important images I’ve taken, but I really don’t know what’s important. A lot of things will change. I just know what I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I’ve been traveling America since I was a child. I’ve been traveling all my life and looking at America out of the back seat window, so it’s not an unusual thing for me, It’s like normal and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love what I do. I’m not tired of traveling– it’s just fascinating to me. Absolutely fascinating, no matter where I am… I really think that I will be doing this for the rest of my life. I’ve done it for so long that I think it will carry on.

The post “This is my time and I’m recording it”: Carol Highsmith and the nature of giving appeared first on Creative Commons.

I had the privilege of participating in the second Institute for Open Leadership (IOL), held in Cape Town and hosted by Creative Commons and the Open Policy Network. The institute was attended by people from various places around the world, all with incredible projects. For the last nine years I’ve been active in the area of documentation and museum collections management. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Museology and a Master’s in Information Science. Currently I work as collection manager of Museu da Imigração de São Paulo (Immigration Museum of São Paulo). I also teach Museology at the ETEC Parque da Juventude, where I instruct classes on museums and databases.

At the Institute for Open Leadership, I came in contact with a world little known by me: the world of initiatives supporting open knowledge, open science, open education, and much more. Moreover, as a GLAM professional (“GLAM” is an acronym for “galleries, libraries, archives, and museums”), I had the opportunity to get varied feedback on my open policy proposal I had prepared for the institute. The IOL meeting was very important for me, and in a sense was a watershed moment for the project I am leading at the Immigration Museum.

Lithuanian necklace selected to be part of the exhibition, by Conrado Secassi. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Initially, my project was focused on the following problems: what can we explore by sharing the contents of a large, rich cultural heritage collection if we do not have much information about the underlying author’s rights, rights of publicity, or personality rights? How do we begin to transform the Museu da Imigração into an institution interested in opening its collections despite these limitations?

Many professionals working in GLAM institutions constantly face problems related to intellectual property and authors’ rights in the content of their collections. We are thus led to focus on restriction rather than sharing, which deserves attention, but for which there is no simple, prompt solution. By directly addressing these questions within the scope of my project, I hoped to find advice and best practices from other related GLAM professionals. I needed to get a better answer for how to share other than “it cannot be done.”

As I met IOL participants and learned about their projects, I heard many interesting stories about how universities and other research institutions were able to establish open policies through short, medium, and long-term initiatives. I also learned that the design and implementation of successful open licensing policies will (and should) work through different stages and levels. Finally, I learned it’s crucial to start small with my project, and to work with materials that will bring benefits for the people directly involved. And this, I can now say, was the real turning point for the Museu da Imigração’s project.

Ryukyu hat selected to be part of the exhibition, by Letícia Sá. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Instead of focusing on the thicket of IP concerns with some of the part of our collection, I revised my project to instead explore those materials that could be used and shared in a more open way. In other words, the project was redesigned to start with items from the collection which were already free from any author’s rights restrictions, and which could, for instance, be photographed by the Museu da Imigração’s current team. The museum could— as the author of photos, texts, images, and audiovisual materials about the collection—make those objects available on the web through blogs, social media, and other platforms. At the same time, the museum could establish how this content could be re-used by anybody  through the adoption of Creative Commons licenses.

Upon my return to Brazil, my first major task was to educate the Museu da Imigração’s technical teams on Creative Commons, and to get buy-in with them on what should be done to adopt an open policy at our museum. My colleagues immediately agreed that we should pursue the project, and we decided that our pilot initiative would start with all of the content produced for a temporary exhibit called O Caminho das Coisas (The Way of Things).

The main reason for choosing this particular exhibition as our pilot project was the possibility of involving several professionals in the development of content and materials to be made available online under open licenses. Everybody could see—in a relatively short period of time—the impact of their work to increase the visibility of the collections and of materials produced by the teams. Another important motivation was the fact that this exhibit was the result of a joint research effort between the Museu da Imigração, migrant communities and their descendants, partner institutions, and former donors in order to obtain additional historical information about the institution’s collections.

We agreed to use Creative Commons licenses because the licenses are a clear, objective way of telling the public what can be done with the museum’s content we make available on the web. Moreover, by using Creative Commons licenses, the museum joins the great movement promoted by CC toward sharing, remix, and reuse of knowledge on a global scale.

Based on this decision, the images of objects selected for the exhibition were produced by the team, along with the exhibit’s accompanying educational materials. We also decided that the museum’s blog and its profile on Medium should be licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 from that moment on.

The platforms used for publicizing the images were Flickr (which is heavily used in Brazil by both professional and amateur photographers and institutions), Pinterest (not very popular in Brazil, although it has faithful followers), and Wikimedia Commons. As to the latter, we were happy for the valuable assistance from Rodrigo Padula, coordinator of the Brazilian Wikipedia Group on Education and Research, who helped us in loading the images and educational materials into Wikimedia Commons.

General overview of the exhibition, by Juliana Monteiro. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

O Caminho das Coisas opened on May 21 with a beautiful design meant to stir the public into reflecting on the historical path followed by the items through the lives of their owners until they reached the museum. In addition, QR codes were posted at various locations, inviting the public to view the images in the platforms I mentioned above. We also hoped viewers would share the images and tag the museum on social media.

Our pilot project was launched nearly two months ago, and we have already gained some interesting insights. The first is that the experience has been indeed very exciting and successful. In our team’s view, the 40+ images of key items in our collection that we posted to Flickr, Pinterest, and Wikimedia Commons have opened numerous possibilities for the material’s reuse. In addition, it represents a positive step forward in making the museum’s collections more widely available to different audiences. We are also planning new initiatives by reviewing and analyzing the data and research we’ve gleaned from this pilot.

Other aspects of the exhibition have shown our team that we still have a long, productive way ahead. We identified a major challenge for GLAM institutions in Brazil is to have the capacity and knowledge to be able to consider the “openness” of all collections as a normal, everyday activity. Right now only a few of our institutions are promoting open initiatives, and the public does not always understand what can be created with these type of materials. Also, the lack of tools to encourage people to do this may be a contributing factor to this scenario. Sure, we manage to secure likes on Facebook and shares on social media, but we still don’t know if or how the images are being reused in other contexts. Finally, there is a lack of knowledge about Creative Commons licenses—both on the part of the public and by institutions as well.

With this in mind, we know it is not enough simply to upload images onto the web – we need to tell people about them, contextualize them, and get feedback and cooperation from various audiences. Our use of social media in this experience showed us that we must adapt our way of communicating about open content in order to reach new and diverse groups of people. We have already learned, for instance, that it is not worth showing photos of details of objects on Wikimedia Commons, as these types of images are not useful for illustrating Wikipedia articles. However, they can be explored on Pinterest, where the public is more accustomed to searching for these kinds of specific detailed images.

We know that Flickr is a useful tool for photographers—even those interested in licensing photos for commercial use. At the same time, we might focus on using alternative popular platforms to talk about the project and invite the public to view, enjoy, and comment on our images. Of course, apps and sites such as Instagram and Facebook are quite popular in Brazil.

We are learning by trial and error. We want to test our ideas and see which ones will mature. My IoL grant made it possible for us to include the proposal of opening our collections as something the museum should address more systematically in our internal policies and public mission. We believe that through these steps we will be positively promoting a more open cultural heritage that is increasingly accessible to all.

The post Creative Commons and Museu da Imigração: notes on a Brazilian experience appeared first on Creative Commons.

Durante o Institute for Open Leadership, pude entrar em contato com um mundo até então pouco conhecido por mim: o mundo de iniciativas pró-conhecimento aberto, ciência aberta, educação aberta e muito mais. Além disso, enquanto profissional da área GLAM (“GLAM” é um acrônimo, em inglês, para “galleries, libraries, archives, and museums”, ou “galerias, bibliotecas, arquivos e museus”) tive a chance de receber diferentes retornos a respeito da proposta que apresentei para o instituto. Posso dizer, assim, que o IOL representou um momento importante e, de certa forma, um divisor de águas para o projeto que estou liderando na instituição onde atuo.

colar Lituano selecionado para fazer parte da exposição, por, by Conrado Secassi. CC BY-SA 4.0. Fonte: Wikimedia Commons.

Inicialmente, o projeto era focado nos seguintes problemas: o que podemos explorar em uma coleção grande e rica por meio de compartilhamento de conteúdos, se nós não tivermos informações sobre os direitos de autor incidentes, bem como os direitos de reprodução ou de personalidade? Como podemos transformar o Museu da Imigração em uma instituição interessada em abrir suas coleções apesar das limitações envolvidas?

Muitos profissionais que trabalham em instituições GLAM constantemente enfrentam problemas relacionados à propriedade intelectual e direitos de autor relacionados às suas coleções. Por essa razão, é muito comum que sejamos imediatamente direcionados a focar nas restrições muito mais do que nas possibilidades de compartilhamento – que, claro, demandam atenção, mas que não possuem uma solução rápida ou imediata. Ao colocar tais questões no escopo do meu projeto, eu esperava encontrar respostas e boas práticas de outros profissionais GLAM. Eu necessitava encontrar uma resposta melhor à questão sobre como compartilhar melhor do que “isso não pode ser feito”.

Ao conhecer os outros projetos e os participantes do IOL, pude ouvir muitas histórias interessantes sobre como universidades e outras instituições de pesquisa conseguiram estabelecer políticas abertas mediante algumas ações de curto, médio e longo prazos – às vezes, algumas ações eram muito básicas, porém estrategicamente importantes. Pude aprender também que processos de criação e aplicação de políticas abertas podem (e devem) ter diferentes etapas e níveis. Finalmente, aprendi que seria crucial começar aos poucos o meu projeto e com aquilo que iria trazer benefícios diretos para as pessoas diretamente envolvidas. E aqui posso dizer que reside o principal turning point para o projeto do Museu da Imigração.

chapéu de Ryukyu selecionado para fazer parte da exposição, por Letícia Sá. CC BY-SA 4.0. Fonte: Wikimedia Commons.

Ao invés de focar nas questões de propriedade intelectual mais difíceis relacionadas à parte da nossa coleção, revisei meu projeto para que ele pudesse, ao contrário, explorar aqueles materiais que poderiam ser usados e compartilhados de uma forma mais aberta. Em outras palavras, o projeto foi redesenhado para começar com itens da coleção que eram livres de quaisquer restrições de direitos de autor, e que poderia, por exemplo, ser fotografados pela equipe atual do Museu da Imigração. Desta forma, o museu poderia – enquanto autor de fotos, textos, imagens e materiais audiovisuais sobre a coleção – tornar tais objetos disponíveis na web por meio de blogs, redes sociais e outras plataformas. Ao mesmo tempo, o museu poderia estabelecer como este conteúdo poder ser reusado por qualquer pessoa ao adotar as licenças Creative Commons.

Já de volta ao Brasil, a primeira grande tarefa realizada por mim foi conversar com as diferentes equipes técnicas do Museu da Imigração a respeito do que é o Creative Commons e convencê-las sobre o que poderia ser feito para começarmos uma política aberta em nossa instituição. Meus colegas imediatamente concordaram de que deveríamos ir adiante com o projeto, e decidimos que nossa iniciativa piloto começaria com todo o conteúdo produzido para a exposição temporária O Caminho das Coisas.

O principal motivo para escolher esta exposição particular como nosso projeto piloto foi a possibilidade de envolvimento direto de vários profissionais no desenvolvimento de conteúdos e materiais para disponibilização online com licença aberta. Assim, todos teriam a chance de ver – em um período relativamente curto de tempo – o impacto de seu trabalho contribuindo para o aumento da visibilidade do acervo e de outros materiais produzidos pelas próprias equipes. Outro motivo importante também foi que essa exposição era o resultado de um processo colaborativo de pesquisa do Museu da Imigração com comunidades de migrantes e descendentes, instituições parceiras e antigos doadores, cujo alvo é levantar mais informações sobre o acervo da instituição.

Nós concordamos em usar as licenças Creative Commons porque elas constituem um jeito claro e objetivo de comunicar ao público o que pode ser feito com o conteúdo produzido pelo museu e que disponibilizamos na web. Além disso, ao usar as licenças Creative Commons, o museu participa de um grande movimento promovido pelo CC relacionado ao compartilhamento, remix e reuso do conhecimento em uma escala global.

A partir da decisão, imagens das peças selecionadas para a exposição foram produzidas e selecionadas pela própria equipe, assim como os materiais educativos relacionados. Também decidimos que o blog do museu e o seu perfil no Medium  deveriam ser usar a licença CC BY-SA 4.0 a partir daquele momento em diante.

As plataformas utilizadas para divulgar as imagens foram o Flickr (que é bastante usado no Brasil por fotógrafos profissionais ou amadores, bem como por instituições), Pinterest (não muito popular no Brasil, mas com seguidores fiéis), e Wikimedia Commons. Sobre o última, vale destacar a grande colaboração de Rodrigo Padula, coordenador do Grupo Wikimedia Brasileiro de Educação e Pesquisa, que nos ajudou no carregamento de imagens e materiais educativos no Wikimedia Commons.

visão geral da exposição, por Juliana Monteiro. CC BY-SA 4.0. Fonte: Wikimedia Commons.

O Caminho das Coisas inaugurou dia 21 de maio, com uma expografia muito bonita e feita para promover uma reflexão junto ao público sobre os caminhos que os objetos percorrem ao longo da vida de seus antigos proprietários até chegarem ao museu. Além disso, em vários pontos da exposição foram colocados QR codes convidando o público a checar as imagens existentes nas plataformas citadas anteriormente. Nós também tínhamos a expectativa que os visitantes poderiam compartilhar as imagens e taggear o museu nas redes sociais.

Nosso projeto piloto foi lançado há quase dois meses, e nós já podemos dizer que ganhamos alguns insights interessantes. O primeiro é que a experiência tem sido, sim, muito instigante e exitosa. Na perspectiva da nossa equipe, as cerca de 40+ imagens postadas no Flickr, Pinterest e Wikimedia Commons abriram inúmeras possibilidades de reuso do material. Além disso, o projeto representa um passo rumo à disponibilização cada vez maior das coleções do museu para diferentes públicos. Nós também estamos planejando novas iniciativas e analisando os dados que conseguimos adquirir a partir deste piloto.

Outros aspectos da exposição têm mostrado para nossa equipe que ainda temos um longo e produtivo caminho pela frente. Identificamos que um desafio significativo para as instituições GLAM no Brasil é a capacidade e conhecimento para considerar a “abertura” de todas as coleções como uma atividade normal, rotineira. Apenas algumas de nossas instituições promovem iniciativas abertas e o público nem sempre compreende o que pode ser criado a partir ou com os materiais. Do mesmo modo, a falta de ferramentas que encorajem as pessoas a fazer isso pode ser um fator que contribui com tal cenário. Claramente, nós queremos que as pessoas deem likes no Facebook e compartilhem os conteúdos nas redes sociais, mas ainda não sabemos se ou como as imagens estão sendo reutilizadas em outros contextos. Por último, vale dizer que ainda há uma falta de conhecimento geral a respeito das licenças Creative Commons – tanto por parte do público quanto por parte das instituições.

Com isso em mente, sabemos que não é suficiente simplesmente subir imagens na web – nós precisamos falar às pessoas sobre elas, contextualizá-las e conseguir retornos de diferentes públicos. Nosso uso das redes sociais nesta experiência nos mostrou que precisamos adaptar nossa forma de falar sobre conteúdo aberto de forma a atingir novos e diferentes grupos. Nós já aprendemos, por exemplo, que não é válido mostrar fotos de detalhes de objetos no Wikimedia Commons, já que este tipo de imagem não colaboraria na alimentação de artigos da Wikipédia. Porém, elas podem ser exploradas no Pinterest, pois o público ali está mais acostumado a pesquisar por esses tipos específicos de imagens em detalhe.

Sabemos também que o Flickr é uma ferramenta muito útil para fotógrafos – inclusive aqueles interessados em licenciar suas imagens para uso comercial. Ao mesmo tempo, podemos direcionar nosso trabalho para usar outras plataformas alternativas que falem sobre o projeto e convidem o público a visualizar, curtir e comentar nossas imagens. E do mesmo modo, aplicativos e sites como Instagram e Facebooks são muito populares no Brasil e podem ser explorados nas próximas experiências.

Estamos aprendendo por tentativa e erro. Queremos testar nossas ideias e verificar quais delas vão amadurecer. Minha bolsa para participar do IoL tornou possível para nós incluir a proposta de abrir nossas coleções como algo que o museu deveria incorporar de forma mais sistemática em nossas políticas internas e missão pública. Acreditamos que por meio destes passos nós conseguiremos promover um patrimônio cultural cada vez mais aberto e acessível para todos.

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In a reminder that “free license” is not the same as “public domain,” Ars Technica and Wikipedia report the CC license upheld in Italy.

Last year, Festival delle Resistenze 2016 in Trentino-Alto Adige misused a photo of the journalist Niccolò Rampini that had been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a CC-by-SA-4.0 license by a professional photographer named Federico Caranti. The festival neither attributed Caranti, nor released the image under the same license, which is stipulated in the conditions of the license 

Together with his lawyer, Simone Aliprandi, Caranti and the festival organizers came to an agreement in which Caranti’s legal costs were covered and the festival released a statement of apology.

In Caranti’s words, “I’m happy to see my photos spread around, but I demand proper attribution. It’s not much for a free photo.”

Attribution is a key component of the Creative Commons licenses. We have historically encouraged license holders to amicably resolve their concerns around attribution and reuse and applaud the work of both Caranti and Aliprandi.

As Wikipedia writes, “By giving creators the attribution they deserve, you can fill voids on your websites as well.” For more on how to correctly attribute Creative Commons photos, check this guide on our Wiki.

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