Clip Art, Redux

[Joyce Conklin <jconkli@SMCOE-NS.ED.CO.SANMATEO.CA.US>]

I had a conversation with a very nice lady (forgot to ask permission to
use her name here, so I won't) at Libraries Unlimited, who faxed me the
copyright notice for the books I had referenced here earlier in the week.
These books were published before the electronic publishing era
blossomed, so there was different information.

"All the art contained in the book is original, created by graphic
designers expressly for this publication. Any resemblance to any design
or picture from any other source is purely coincidental.
     i.e. this isn't ripped off from anyone else
     In today's parlance -- my words -- don't copy a picture from any
     source just cuz it looks good (remember Holli's comment yesterday
     about a copyrighted comic character illustrating the draft copy
     of their district policy statement about following copyright law?)
"All the text in this book is fully protected by copyright and may NOT(my
emphasis) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the
publisher."
     OK, that wasn't what we were concerned about, anyway.
"The art may be used in visual communications of ANY (my emphasis) nature
as an illustration or decoration."
     So the pictures in the book may be used by teachers/librarians to
     decorate publications for school use. [My interpretation is...
     But don't try to _sell_ what you've created with this art without
     prior permission. And even if you're not _selling_ anything, it's
     still modelling good "behavior" to give credit to the source of your
     pictures, even if they are "copyright free" for educators.]
"It [the art -- see previous quoted sentence] may NOT (my emphasis) be
used in whole or in part for multiple resale either in printed or
electronic form."

Reviews quoted in this catalog item include:
"Plenty to stimulate and inspire _as well as to copy._" (Booklist)
"...Even if you have no computer or audiovisual media, the high-quality
graphics will add zip to your publicity, labels, signs, etc. A joy to
use." (VOYA)

On the same catalog page, there are the following advertised:
disks of border art (Mac or IBM)
disks of clip art -- "This beautiful collection of copyright-free
clip art --..." (Mac or IBM)
CD-ROM version of the disks of clip art (Mac or IBM)

So at least this one supplier has plenty of clip art material which is
copyright free. The nice lady said it was their aim to assist librarians,
and that they were fully aware of the budgetary constraints! Her advice,
however, was to check the copyright notice on EACH AND EVERY book of clip
art you might purchase so that you buy what you can use within the
copyright limits.

Hope this clears up any problem I may have inadvertently started!

Joyce Conklin                      jconkli@ed.co.sanmateo.ca.us