Social Studies Portfolio

How & Where to Find Images for Your Civil War Podcast Project

Public domain.

This is a term that is important for you, as big, bad 8th graders, to know.

The public domain refers to works (writing, images, music, etc.) that are not owned by anyone, are not protected by copyright, and can thus be used freely.  Examples include:

• The Bible (created before copyright laws existed)
• Shakespeare plays (copyright has expired)
• The Constitution, Congress laws, Supreme Court documents, etc. (government document)

Photos from the Civil War are all in the public domain because their copyright (if they had them to begin with) has expired.  Photos from modern reenactments, paintings and other Civil War related works, however, might not be in the public domain.

Rather than using Google Image search to find images for your podcast, we'd like you to use the the web site collections listed below.

WHY?  Because you need to understand and abide by copyright rules and all the given sites have public domain images only.  Also, you will find really great images from these sites that you might not find through a Google image search.  Oh, and it's always good to try new things (even if we're making you do it).

Create a folder on your desktop clearly labeled with your full name and project description (ex. Kristen Sanchez Civil War Project).

Save your images inside the folder (rather than right on the desktop).  This will make it easy to import into iMovie when you're ready.  Make sure that you save the largest image size possible.  Thumbnails and low resolution images will become fuzzy in iMovie and you will lose points.  Remember, NO clip art is allowed.

Keep track of your image sources. You need to include a bibliography at the end of your iMovie that includes ALL sources (text and images).  EasyBib has a citation creator for photographs.

Search the following sites:

• The Library of Congress Selected Civil War Photographs Archive
• The Library of Congress Civil War Maps Collection
• The Library of Congress Photographs of Women During the Civil War
• The Library of Congress *MAIN* Site (enter your search terms into the search box --> Choose Photo/Print/Drawing from the dropdown menu)
• CivilWarPhotos.Net
• National Archives Civil War Photo Collection
• CivilWar.Org/Photos
• Mathew Brady Civil War Photographs at Flickr
• Smithsonian Flag
• Harper's Weekly Civil War Collection

If you want to use an image NOT from one of these sites, show it to me to get my okay.

Once you have your images (you should have at least 8), you should work on a plan.  I recommend that you take a printout of your narrative (part 2) and highlight with different colors into logical chunks.  You will need the same number of photos as you have chunks.  Oh, and it is okay to revise your writing before you begin recording.  Sometimes when we reread a few days later we realize we can make something sound better.  You should definitely do this!

Most of the photos we have from the Civil War era were taken by a man named Mathew Brady.  You can read more about Mathew Brady at the links below.

• article about Mathew Brady from the Washington Post
• article about Mathew Brady's Antietam photos from The New York Times (1862)
• article about Mathew Brady's Antietam photos from The New York Times (2012)

You can also learn more about Mathew Brady at www.mathewbrady.com