DIY: a public domain Christmas

Thomas Nast’s most famous drawing, “Merry Old Santa Claus”,
from the January 1, 1881 edition of Harper’s Weekly. Public Domain Review

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The simple act of sharing a digital book can become complicated in this patent- and copyright-bound age. If a book, story, poem, or film is public domain, you can use and/or alter the material in any way you chose. This is especially helpful if you create websites, digital art, or publish videos. Keep in mind there's a strong line between offering what you create for personal use and monetizing it. Also, if your creation uses elements of another artist's/entity's creation or alters it, the original artist has a right to say how his/her creation is used. Shepard Fairey got in trouble for his use of Mannie Garcia's photo for his Barack Obama Hope poster. Using public domain pieces just works better.

To get started with finding public domain information, take a look at How to Celebrate a Public Domain Christmas at wikiHow. While the article goes a little overboard--you can use any image you want in your own home--it gives some ideas on finding pieces that are in the public domain. But do take care when you make something available to the general public.

For a list of free Christmas plays and stories, there's 10 classic Christmas stories, free to download. A helpful feature of this article is the reference to Project Gutenberg. Something I just learned: "Project Gutenberg is facilitating online publishing by contemporary authors." I also learned that there's a site called WikiLeaks: "WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists..."

An interesting site that offers pieces in the public domain is The Public Domain Review. In the Collections section many sources are named and content made available. Some of the pieces are the digitized form of documents and works of art that are centuries old. Careful, some of the images can be disturbing. You can select what to view by medium or era.

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Ellis Island immigrants, Dutch children, Public Domain Review

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Finding background music for videos can be time-consuming. Google's Audio Library offers a very nice selection with descriptions including the genre and mood. Also included are precise notes on fair use/rights. You can find this library by logging into your YouTube account and choosing "My Channel" in the upper left menu. Then choose "Video Manager" from the bar above your YouTube banner. Along the left side of the page is a list with "Create" at the bottom. The Create dropdown includes "Audio Library" and "Video Editor." Once on the Audio Library page there are several options to filter its contents. You can download the audio sample selected.


--Marge