Help with copyright for creators, media professionals, entrepreneurs, and students

A spring clean at home surfaced an article on 'copyright user' from some time ago, which I ripped out of a magazine.  I have been meaning to share it, so here it is with a couple of related websites.  There are also a range of books available on the topic in the library. 

http://copyrightuser.org/

“CopyrightUser.org is an online resource aimed at making UK copyright law accessible to creators, media professionals, entrepreneurs, students, and members of the public.”

http://www.copyrighthub.co.uk/

"...help if you want to get permission to use somebody else's work, or want to know about how copyright relates to your own work."

Copyright Guide for University Students (JISC Legal - 31 December 2014)

"...sets out to answer questions that university students may have about copyright.  It is intended as a document staff can provide to students to inform them about the basics of copyright enabling them to protect their own work and to use other people’s materials lawfully."

NB: JISC legal has now closed, so this guide won't be updated.  


Other resources

Morrison, C. (2015).  Copyright the Card Game.  Available from Jorum: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19369

BL releases over 1 million images onto Flickr Commons

The British Library have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix or repurpose.  More information here.

The Content Map - new website

A new website has been produced to help UK consumers identify sources of legal downloads, and streaming services.  Developed by the Alliance for Intellectual Property (note the URL), The Content Map acts as a good survey of key sites such as Amazon, Apple, BBC, ITV, etc.  It also includes some you may not have come across such as Curzon On Demand and Dogwoof.tv.

Once the money available for the website had been spent, I don't think much was left for promotion, so please share!

On a related note I was reminded recently of the BUFVC's Moving Image Gateway, which is an excellent compendium of websites related to moving image and sound material.

OER (Open Educational Resources)

This is a quick post for academic staff rather than students.  If you've heard of 'OER's, and want to know more, have a look at a very natty guide from Jisc.  Available here: A guide to open educational resources.

The story of LIFE magazine...

...is another programme I have found on BOB. Photographer Rankin profiles, "the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century" here (or embedded below).

Incidentally, Life is now available online courtesy of Google Books. You will find every issue from 1936, when the magazine was first issued, until 1972. It's fantastic!



This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

British Council Film Collection - now online

The British Council Film Collection is an archive of over 120 short documentary films made by the British Council during the 1940s designed to show the world how Britain lived, worked and played.

Why do Wikipedia entries always appear at the top of Google results?

I had thought that Google ranks results according to the number and significance of links to a particular page, as well as calculating the number of references to your search terms in that page.

So, why when you compare the number of incoming links to the top two results for the search term  'Research' does the top entry (a Wikipedia entry) have 110 million incoming links, compared to the second entry with 947 million?

It could be that the links to the Wikipedia entry are from sites that themselves have lots of links, but I doubt it.  I think, more likely, that links to the Wikipedia domain are also included within the rank, so that individual Wikipedia pages are boosted because of the popularity of the site as a whole.  This means that any entry on Wikipedia is likely to have a high ranking.

Here are some reasons to avoid using Wikipedia.

Old Periodicals Online

An advert in this 1910 The British Journal Photographic Almanac declares the Regent Street Polytechnic - a former incarnation of the University of Westminster - as having, "The first, largest and most successful school of photography in the world."  You will find it here.



This e-copy resides on the Internet Archive. 

Thanks to Jo Barker for sending me the link to the photography periodicals section of The Digital Book Index.  There are also links to early copies of Photograms of the year (copies of which are also in the library), which are gems! (see here for example). And there are other sections to explore: the Photography Collections page looks particularly interesting.

International photography magazines

The latest edition of European Photography contains a survey of international photography magazines.  The selection of 43 titles ranges from print media to freely available magazines online.  The freely available publications are listed below.  Of these, the only one I  currently regularly look at is Lens Culture - distinguished by its inclusion of video interviews with photographers.

1000 Words
Ahorn Magazine
American Suburb X
Dide
Flak Photo
Fototapeta
F-Stop Magazine
Lens Culture
Lunatic
Ninja Magazine
Purpose
SuperMassiveBLackHoLe

Foam is an obvious omission from the list and while the online version does not live up to the splendidly produced print version, it is a useful alternative (I'm sorry we don't subscribe to the print).  Like Foam, Foto Kvartāls also publishes a free version online using the issuu platform and is similarly ommitted from the European Photography list.  Admittedly it is published in Latvian,  but it does claim to have an international remit. 

The Canadian Prefix Photo is also not listed (not online) and neither is the Edinburgh-based Portfolio (not online, but available in the library).

There must be others...  Etudes Photographiques, Fotografia, Photography Quarterly.  If you would like to recommend one, leave a comment or even better leave a review (I think reviews of non-English language titles would be particularly interesting).

For convenience, I'll also list the titles that you do have to pay for - are these necessarily the better ones?  I have highlighted the ones we take in the library [the links take you to the magazine homepage, not the full-text of the publication].

8 Magazine
Ag
Aperture
Blind Spot
Camera Austria
Chinese Photography
Daylight Magazine
Der Greif
dienacht
Eikon
European Photography* [available online via Library Search]
Exit
Eyemazing
F
Fantom
Fotograf
Fotografija
GUP magazine
HotShoe
IANN
Imago
Katalog
Klack
Kwartalnik Fotografia
Next Level
Ohio Photomagazin
OjodePez
Photonews
Photoworks
Private
Source


References

International Photography Magazines. European Photography v. 31 no. 87 (Summer 2010) p. 74-5.

Further reading
 
Groll, M. Bloghopping. European Photography v. 29 no. 84 (Winter 2008/2009) p. 70-2

Trenkler, K. International Photography Festivals. European Photography v. 29 no. 84 (Winter 2008/2009) p. 76-7

British Film Institute National Library

I visited the British Film Institute National library back in May to learn about using their collections.

The resources available in the Reading Room include: books, periodicals, databases and newspaper cutting files; pressbooks and unpublished scripts; film festival catalogues dating back to the 1930s; and audio material, including interviews with film makers.

It is not free to use (even for BFI members), so take a look at the membership fees before you visit the library, which is just off the Tottenham Court Road.  Also, take a look at their catalogue before you visit and look at some of the special collections – there are over 600.

My advice is that to get the most out of the collection, you should make full use of the staff there.  They are experienced in helping students, researchers, journalists and cineastes of all descriptions.

There are plenty of other BFI resources available online too, and because they can be a little hard to locate online, I have provided some links here:

BFI National Library
     BFI Film and TV Database
     BFI Researchers' Guide
     BFI Resource Guides (16+ Source Guides)
BFI Live (video channel, with interviews and rare footage)
BFI National Archives
     Research Viewing Service
     Screen Online
     BFI YouTube Channel
     BFI InView (British history through the lens)
Sight and Sound Archive


Related posts

Screen online - video clips and full length films

Movie clips – alternative to YouTube

Not in Kansas anymore

Movieclips.com is an interesting new website, providing an alternative to YouTube for watching film clips.  The site is in 'beta' mode and I have experienced some problems viewing clips, but it is still worth a look.

One nice feature is that it is totally legal – they have apparently worked with Hollywood studios to bring the site to fruition. Another feature is that you can browse the content – by movie, actor, genre, occasion, action, mood, character, theme, setting and prop; and you can also browse through a selection of iconic clips.

I also like the way that you can search for a particular phrase (in the dialogue) – the clips below are the two results for the phrase, “not in Kansas anymore.”




Further reading
Studios click with Movieclips [Variety]

Related post
Screen online - video clips and full length films (for British films)

LIFE available on Google Books

I often use Google Books to preview books that I am interested in, such as David Campany's Photography and cinema below.

However, there is also a lot of material available in full.  For example, I recently found copies of Life magazine ("the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century") from 1953-72 [UPDATE - NOW AVAILABLE FROM 1936].

Available here: http://books.google.co.uk/books/serial/ISSN:00243019


 

Update

Issues of LIFE are now available from November 1936

Photography in motion

The use of multimedia to present still photography was discussed in the last course committee for the Masters in Photojournalism. Ever since then I seem to have been coming across examples...

First, there was the not very inspiring ‘New Review’s Month in Photography’ from the guardian.co.uk: an overview of recent photographic exhibitions and books to the sound of Bach. The guardian.co.uk has a page dedicated to ‘audio slideshows’ as it calls them, but the ones I took a look at didn’t catch my imagination.

Then, when I was looking for books on the University of Chicago Press website, I came across a slideshow derived from a book of photographs on the ‘great American plains.’ The use of Dvorak’s 'New World Symphony' is probably entirely appropriate, but to someone who grew up hearing it used on the Hovis advert, it seems incongruous…

Taking a tip from a student, I took a look at the Magnum in Motion website, where there are many fine examples. I enjoyed Mark Power’s ‘The Shipping Forecast,’ although it made the project seem more kitsch than the book (available in the library).

I also found a section on multimedia in the most recent edition (the sixth) of Kenneth Kobre’s book Photojournalism: the professionals approach, which has been recently added to the library collection. I followed up some references in that and found Ken Kobre’s blog and Ken Kobre’s guide [to video journalism on the web]. Lots and lots to explore there.

He recommends Mindy McAdam’s book Flash Journalism: how to create multimedia news packages (which also has a website with examples) and I have bought an e-copy of Flash journalism for the library collection. There are plenty of other books on Flash etc on Safari Tech Books online (available through InfoLinX).

I didn’t find much looking for articles in journals on the subject, but I did find a useful essay in an old edition of the British Journal of Photography (only available in print I am afraid):

Smyth, D. (2008). Threat Or Opportunity? British Journal of Photography, 155(7671), 18-20.

If anyone knows of any other interesting commentaries on this developing media, please leave a comment…

Going back a bit, it is interesting to see what film directors have done with still images. Poliakoff very effectively used stills in 'Shooting the past' (1999): there is a clip of 'Shooting the past' on Screen Online (Select ‘The Collection’) and going back further and into the realms of obscurity, see a clip of the Lindsay Anderson directed Alan Bennett play, ‘The Old Crowd’ (Select ‘The Slideshow’).

John Smith - filmmaker

Students on the Curating Contemporary Art MA programme at the Royal College of Art are putting on an exhibition of the artist and filmmaker John Smith, which opens tomorrow.

His 1996 short film ‘Blight’ is available to watch within the university as part of the ‘Arts on Film Archive.’  

There are also examples of his work available at the following websites:

http://www.lux.org.uk/collection/artists/john-smith-0

http://www.lightcone.org/en/filmmaker-513-john-smith.html

And we have examples of his work on the following DVDs/Videos in the library:

DVD: Cinema 16: British short films (Girl Chewing Gum)

DVD: Shoot shoot shoot: British avant-garde film of the 1960s and 1970s (Leading Light)

VHS: John Smith: anthology (Blight; Home Suite)

VHS: VIDEOTAPE 4352 (Slow Glass)

Nanocrowd – the movie search engine

This is just a bit of fun, brought to my attention by Phil Bradley on his blog. As he points out, it is not a search engine, but a discovery tool.

Enter a film that you like, and it will attempt to suggest others that you will like. I tried Lars Vons Trier’s ‘The Idiots’ and it suggests ‘The Truman Show,’ ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American Beauty’ amongst others – well, I like one of them at least! It also presents ‘nano genres’ - three word summaries of the film that you entered. ‘The Idiots’ is summed up as ‘thought-provoking happiness’ and ‘morality moral shock.’

http://www.nanocrowd.com/