margaret-cooter: Monday miscellany

Shocking copying: paid pennies for piecework (via)

Copying has another side, away from the art sweatshops of China ... it can be very useful for the student, as in these wise words about the value of copying: "copying something inspirational is a good way to start off any new technique, the worry of design is taken away and suddenly invention takes over" (quote from Janet Haigh's blog)

***

More books for the wish list -

(via)

***

Getting rid of books? Consider donating them to Better World Books -

"Better World Books collect and sell books online to donate books and fund literacy initiatives worldwide. Every time you buy a book someone else in need gets one.
In addition to selling new titles, Better World Books supports book drives and collects used books and textbooks through a network of over 2,300 college campuses and partnerships with over 3,000 libraries nationwide. So far, the company has converted more than 117 million books into over $15 million in funding for literacy and education. In the process, they’ve also diverted more than 73,000 tons of books from landfills." (found here; short video about the project is here) Only problem is - they are based in US and it's not clear whether they accept international donations.

***

Find out about reverse image search at http://makingamark.squidoo.com/reverse-search-image

To quote from the site: "A reverse image search starts with an image and looks for all similar images. The image is introduced to a specialised search engine ... and it finds all the results on the Internet which are a good match."

A reverse image search is useful for finding out if people have been "stealing" your images. (And for fuelling copyright hysteria?)

It's also useful for finding where an image came from, so that you can contact the author for permission to use it, or credit it if you decide to use it on a blog or elsewhere.