Get Creative with Creative Commons

When a post called “PSA: Don’t Let Salami and Google Images Get You In Hot Water” from Edublogs flitted across my Facebook feed, I was tempted. Who doesn’t like salami?

 

But it was more than the desire for a tasty snack that made me click the link.  In all of my many jobs, I use images. For choir programs, for websites, for worship bulletins and announcements, articles, YouTube videos…the list goes on and on.  It’s all about the visual.

 

It’s so tempting (and easy) to grab any old image from Google Images or Flickr to embellish our publications.  But, there’s a right way to go about using images, and Sue Waters from Edublogs has provided a great tutorial for image use, attribution, and that dreaded c-word:  copyright.  They’ve included links to wonderful sources for images that are “copyright friendly.”

 

If you don’t already know about Creative Commons and their “some rights reserved” licensing structure, you need to.  It’s not just for images, but images are a good place to start to understand what Creative Commons does.  The post from Sue Waters at Edublogs has an excellent breakdown of the different types of licenses Creative Commons offers.

 

By the way, the image to the left is the second hit for “conductor” on OpenClipArt.org.  Which tells me we need better representation in the public domain image arena.