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The Mason Basketball Digital Memory Bank is now live at http://hoops.gmu.edu.

… As Patriot hoops make history, our historians are helping fans become a part of the story. By posting online their memories and media files of this momentous run to the Final Four, fans around the world can become a part of this important process. Our stories, as a component of this digital archive, will become part of a living history …

From a announcement today by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM).

In a mini-rant on one of the ACW boards yesterday, a publisher of an excellent website raged about someone stealing and re-posting his “copyrighted” photographs from the site. The alleged perpetrator was characterized in vulgar terms. All of these online photos, as far as I can tell, were created during the 1860s, and the pictures in question would have been of Civil War general officers.

Putting aside the moral obligations for crediting sources, or respecting someone’s family pictures, or the sanctity of a private collection, or whatever else might be in play, I have a fundamental problem with his complaint of copyright infringement.

How can our angry friend claim to own the copyright on these pictures? They are, by my reading of US Copyright law, in the public domain. Public Domain = not copyrightable. (more…)

Back in September, Jeremy Boggs asked how historians use or should use footnotes on the web. A brief discussion of when they’re useful and what they should contain followed.

Coincidentally, I had just recently finished the database structure and some basic code to process references and citations on AotW for that very purpose. Jeremy’s entry made me think about the subject a little more.

Not being an academic, I felt unqualified to comment then, but it seems to me that footnoting on the web has nearly the same benefits and requirements as it does in print. So to footnote or not isn’t a tough decision; it just depends on what kind of website you run. Where you put the notes (i.e., bottom, side, tool-tip) and how you jump back from the note to the text again seem minor distinctions as well. Finally, on whether to hyperlink directly to online sources, I do it in the footnote rather than in the body text so as not to lose the reader entirely. (more…)