JPK Huson 1863
Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Location
- Central Pennsylvania
Using this iconic photo of Elizabeth and Peter Thorn's home, Gettysburg Gatehouse taken July, 1863. Center of so much of our History, so significant to the battle, forever branded in our collective minds it's one of several nearly sacred spots. Making a point- image belongs to all of us both figuratively and literally. You can get it for free by means of your tax dollars put to amazing use, or buy it.
One reason I post so many images of the era is exactly this. History belongs to everyone. I don't mean relics, private collections or books- people work hard at those. I mean the History preserved for all of us in so many different, public access archives I'm still finding them. Thing is, when ' Googling ' topics, images come up watermarked and for sale, for a price, it's yours. So you don't use it. Guess where a huge amount originated? LoC for one source, National Archives, another. Our tax dollars support these wonderful archives, they return the support by giving us public access to their collections.
Privately run sites, same thing but rely on donations. You can find most periodicals, if not newspapers. Hathitrust, Project Gutenberg, Internet Archives, The Lincoln Foundation- dedicated to History, they share it with all of us.
So you see the same thing on Ebay. Images from LoC for sale, watermarked, but yours for a few bucks. Heck, I've seen images from LoC someone is claiming is original. I'm ALLLLL about making your own way in the world. Been self employed for too many years not to be fiercely defensive of challenging your own finances, see if you can go it out there. But. This bugs me, thought I'd see if anyone has an opinion. Someone looking for an image may not be aware of resources encouraging us to share, is it a. fair to kinda dupe them ( no fan of PT Barnum's egress ) and b. cool to profit in this way from our collective history- and tax dollars?
Seeing a lot of it.