Church domes in Almaty (aka Alma Ata), Kazakhstan. Photo credit C. T. Evans.

Short introduction

For a historian working on the web, there may be no more important issue than copyright. What can you publish? What can you use? How can you use an item? Who owns the copyright to a particular item? What is Fair Use? How do you copyright your own work?

What you must do in this unit

• Read Rosenzweig's Owning the Past?.
• Read this week's note on copyright and the web, because copyright restrictions continue to plague the development of web content by historians. 1923 is a key year to remember.
• Please also have a look at my history of web generations.
• Watch this, A Fair(y) Use Tale.
• Watch the video for this unit of the course on YouTube.
• Have a look at
  • Creative Commons
  • Copyright
  • Copyright & Fair Use
  • Using Works in Your Teaching, What You Can Do
• Let's look at some of our local museums and see what sort of copyright statements, if they have any, that they use for their materials.
  • Reston Museum
  • Loudoun Museum
  • Fairfax Museum
  • Fredericksburg Area Museum
  • Colonial Williamsburg
  • Manassas Museum System
  • Alexandria Archaeology Museum
  • The Cold War Museum
  • National Portrait Gallery
  • National Women's History Museum
  • Please suggest others.

Submit

• Prepare and take the Midterm exam (125 points).

Extra credit options

• Please suggest any materials relevant to this unit of the course.

Unit learning objectives

• Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge of copyright and intellectual property issues as related to historical materials.