Dear Pafalafa  

In Q309262 you commented as below.  If you'd like to post your list as
an answer to this question, that would be fine. (fee just a little
less than the original as I'm unsure whether these will actually be of
use to me or not. But don't worry - I won't knock off stars if they're
not!)
___________________

Virtually all US government images are in the public domain, and can
be used in your newsletter.  For instance, NASA space images are
available at:

http://nix.nasa.gov/

and their copyright instructions are at:

http://nix.nasa.gov/copyright.html

PHOTOGRAPHY:
Photographs are not protected by copyright unless noted. If
copyrighted, permission should be obtained from the copyright owner
prior to use. If not copyrighted, photographs may be reproduced and
distributed without further permission from NASA. If a recognizable
person appears in a photograph, use for commercial purposes may
infringe a right of privacy or publicity and permission should be
obtained from the recognizable person.

----------

I can provide a dozen or more sites that have government photos for
the taking.

Hello Michael,

Thanks for directing this question to me...hope the answer lives up to
(exceeds?) your expectations.

Here are the best links of the bunch.  Although I originally said a
dozen or more, many of those I was thinking about turned out to be
cumbersome to use, and involved a lot of sorting between copyright and
copyright-free works.

So...the list here is a bit shorter, but I think you'll find a very
rich collection of useful images, just the same, all at no cost.  Here
goes:

==========


US National Archives image search:

http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/basic_search.jsp

check the box labeled:  "Descriptions of Archival Materials linked to
digital copies"

enter search term of interest (e.g. a search on "patents" returns 65
images, "judge" returns over 100).

Note:  you can also use the "Type of Archival Materials" menu to
select Photographs (to eliminate, e.g. images of written works).

==========

Air Force photos for the taking:

http://www.af.mil/photos/

==========

Navy photos:

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org11-2.htm

Note the text on the site:  "To the best of our knowledge, all Online
Library pictures are in the public domain and can therefore be freely
downloaded and used for any purpose without requesting permission."

==========

More absolutely wonderful photos from NASA...sort of their "greatest hits":

http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/


==========

Several hundred US Army images:

http://www4.army.mil/armyimages/

==========

The Library of Congress has a very rich collection of images in the
public domain, but unfortunately, the site isn't all that easy to use.

You can search the "American Memory" collection here:

http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/mdbquery.html

On the right hand side of the page, select "Photos and Prints" to
limit the results to pictures, and enter a term of interest in the
search box.  You'll doubtless get lots of results, but you'll have to
click on the text description of each one to see if it works for you
as an image.

A good way around this cumbersome process is to use this trick.  Head
to the search page for Google Images:

://www.google.com/imghp

Conduct a search that looks like this:

technology site:www.loc.gov

(of course, you can substitute any other search term -- I just used
"technology" as an example).

The results can be seen here:

http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&q=technology+site%3Awww%2Eloc%2Egov

and include 81 images pertaining (more or less) to technology.  I
particularly like this one:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/images/oneworld-learn.jpg

==========

You can use the same trick at other US government sites (some of them
do make use of a small number of copyrighted works, however, so you
need to exercise a bit of care in choosing your images).  For
instance, there are more than 3000 images from the U.S. Senate at
www.senate.gov listed here:

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=+site%3Awww.senate.gov

with lots of busts, and portraits, and hearings, and other lawerly looking things. 

You can try the same at out "lesser" house at:

www.house.gov 

==========

OpenPhoto, a non-government site,  has a collection of free-to-use
photos, variable quality, but some are very nice.  Pictures in the
"Computers" and "Architecture" categories might be useful for you, and
-- useless, but worth mentioning -- they also have a category called
"Girls with Guns"!

Their site is here:

http://openphoto.net/

Details of the copyright license are here:

http://openphoto.net/doc/html/license.html

and allows free commercial use with attribution.  OpenPhoto descirbes it this way:

-----

Essentially, what the license says is that you may use these
photographs in the course of your work (commerical or non-commercial)
provided that you provide proper attribution with your derivative(s).

The value of providing these works via a Creative Commons license is
that the photographer recieves recognition for his or her art.

If you choose to steal our work we will bill you or your organization
for each violation of our policy.

Please note that if attribution is not suitable for your project, we
will consider an alternate license (See Section 6).

==========

I hope this list will meet your needs.  If you have any questions at
all, just post a Request for Clarification, and I'll be happy to
assist you further.

pafalafa-ga


search strategy:  Use of bookmarked sites in my collection.

---

Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 24 Feb 2004 04:34 PST

Thanks for the stars!

I forgot an obvious one...the Patent Office!

So here it is:

http://images.google.com/images?q=site:uspto.gov&svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&start=20&sa=N

Any questions, just let me know.