Public Domain Project

I decided to start building a Netvibes site in which I can assemble resources that are germane to my thinking through the idea of doing this, what I'm calling, the Public Domain Project. So far I have a concept map, a new serialization of the Mass Digitization blogging project (I'm working on the revision of that project now, and it's a piece of the PD Project in that it sets the stage for the problem I expect we will encounter in the next decade as prices for content fall and digital copies really do become a dime a dozen or more likely, free), and related blogs, Free the books and this one. I also linked to my delicious/dissertation bookmarks, shared blog posts from Google Reader, and made a Creative Commons license for the site. I've spent the better part of a day on this (revising Mass Digitization and pulling together the Netvibes page). It was raining all day today, and it's the first full day of Spring break. I had planned to work in the garden, but I really did have a good time doing this instead. I am one sick little kitten.

So, I got to meet Pat Aufderheide (Center for Social Media) this weekend at SxSW. She was moderating a panel of film folks talking about relying on fair use in documentary filmmaking. Brewster Kahle (Open Content Alliance) chatted with us for awhile after her panel, and I got to ask both of them what they thought about the project. Admittedly, I wasn't able to do much but articulate my concerns about it at this point, and Brewster in particular was skeptical that things would come down as I suspect they will ("you're dreaming"). He made some very good points, things I'll have to do a lot more thinking about. Pat was encouraging. I do need to float this by as many people as I can as soon as I can. I don't want to waste time on it if circumstances are not really likely to create the kind of problem I think they could.

Anyway, the Netvibes thing is really cool and I urge folks to have a look at it just for ideas about how you can create a home for a project with lots of Web resources all pulled together in a nice tabbed environment, publicly available. You can have your blog right there, your drafts, your bookmarks, audio and video resources. Very nice. I'll get a little more rigorous about it tomorrow, thinking through more seriously what I need. I am using Zotero for my bibliography, so it's right at the bottom of the page, every page, but I know there are things I haven't thought of yet. Maybe Google Docs. Right now I'm drafting in Word and that's not a good thing. Eek. I started using footnotes. Better shake that habit right this minute.