Public domain - Kate

1. I think I am with several others in the class when I state that I thought this was going to be a relatively quick project; I was wrong. Typically when I work with a project, even if I come to dead ends in the beginning, I am able to pretty quickly navigate my way to sites/sources that will be better. At the end of my table, I wrote a few paragraphs pertaining to the troubles that I encountered along the way. My topic (Roman Army) was pretty vague, so I thought it would be easier to research that way. My Wiki Commons search went fairly well, and I spent time getting what I thought were a variety of images. After that was when I started to run into trouble. I contacted a friend who is a librarian and asked her to point me to an institution or a specific person that might provide more insight. She did a little research on her own and replied back that she thought it would be difficult; the materials dealing with the Roman Army are typically so old that they are "owned" by libraries, private collections, museums, etc. When I would find images applicable to my project, there was typically a page expressing that those images were property and they were not willing to share - so don't even bother asking. Eventually, Bettina just told me to use "illegal" images. Instead of doing this, I used several photos of coins that had Roman emperors and generals on them that were able to be used for educational purposes. While I am sure that somebody who is much more well versed in image research than I am would have been able to fully complete the project, and maybe with little difficulty, it was an incredibly frustrating process for me. Each of the dead ends left me more frustrated than the last.

2. To me, the point of the project was made incredibly clear every time that I met one of those dead ends. First, we have this beautiful history/information/art/etc. that exists in collections all over the world, and greed is holding us back. Because somebody wants to put a copyright protection on it, it prohibits the masses from legally accessing and using the materials - even if it is for educational purposes, sometimes. This re-emphasized the importance of the commons for me. Also, I want to try adding some of my own images into a commons space for use by the public. I think it would be interesting to try out. Secondly, this project really opened my eyes to how prevalent the misuse of images probably is in our society. Something as simple as using a photo in a slideshow for a presentation at work could be illegal. This is good workplace knowledge to have.