The University of Michigan has unveiled the PictureIt Rare Book Reader, an on-screen reader that is similar to others that I have seen, but faster, smoother, and simply beautiful to see and use.

The first book available online is volume one of John James Audubon’s Birds of America:

Click the image to open the reader

The software will be released under a Creative Commons license at some point in the future.

found via the Blog for Library Technology

Copyfraud : Poisoning the Public Domain is an introduction to some of the ways that content providers (websites, publishers, etc.) abuse copyright protections when they use public domain materials.  A couple of minor points, however:

• The act of assigning a copyright to something already in the public domain is the issue; taking a Project Gutenberg text, formatting it, and publishing it is of great benefit to people, as long as one doesn’t claim protection that doesn’t actually exist for the material.
• The Creative Commons Public Domain Tools is not a license, nor is it  an attempt “to become the arbiter of  public domain licensing”, but a way to allow people to have an easy and effective way to display that a work belongs to the Public Domain.

found via LISNews

This post will contain just a couple of links, but there is a wealth of information on the other end of each:

• 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of has been put together by PC World.  I will bet you have heard of at least a few of these, and I would recommend using this as a starting point in your search for resources and applications (i.e. if you see something helpful, look for other resources that provide the same… PC World sometimes skips great resources for simply new and flashy resources).  found via ResourceShelf
• 30+ Places to Find Creative Commons Media is a post on the SitePoint blog, which is a great resource for web developers.  This list is fairly focused, but many people forget about the treasure trove that is Creative Commons when they look for pictures, sound or other media resources.

Great post over at RSS4Lib about placing Creative Commons licensing information into your RSS feed.  This is a fantastic idea because the entire purpose of RSS is to let others have control over how they receive your content.  This allows you to convey your wishes for how people can use what you create within the medium itself.

This reminded me to update the footer information for this blog (look at the bottom of the page if you are viewing this on the Libology web site)

found via Catalogablog

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld (pdf) the Creative Commons License as valid, as well as establishing its relationship to copyright law.  Basically, if someone uses a work in violation of a Creative Commons license, the license itself vanishes (because it is an additional allowance of use under copyright), and the full copyright restriction becomes the rule by which use is judged and restitution made.

Long live Creative Commons!

found via the Lessig blog