Creative Commons has released a statistical analysis of the licensing choices of Flickr users. My summary: most people are happy to provide open access, but they don’t want you messing with their stuff. Some commentators lament the fact that so few Flickr users allow derivative works or commercial use of their materials. But for me the important thing about Creative Commons and its use on sites like Flickr is not the particular licenses people choose, but that they choose open licenses—under terms that are clearly explained and easily understood—at all. It is the clarity that Creative Commons licensing brings and the spur to open access this allows that’s important to education, scholarship, and cultural heritage.

This has made the rounds, but for those of you who haven’t seen it, Indianapolis Museum of Art Director Maxwell Anderson’s recent lecture, Through the Looking Glass: Museums and Internet-Based Transparency is an important statement of the value of openness. Not simply a good talk, IMA is walking the walk.

Our good friend Rob MacDougall points to painter Justine Lai’s series picturing herself having sex with past U.S. presidents. Check your modesty before clicking the link.

The D&D crowd at MIT pays tribute to the late Gary Gygax with a large 20-sided die in Killian Court.

Cartridge Save, a British ink and toner retailer posts a surprisingly in-depth history of print on its corporate blog. Yet again we find that history is good for sales.

I have a confession to make. I actually subscribe to very few of the amateur history blogs I mention here on Found History. 10 Years Ago looks like an exception. According to it’s German author, “Every day a historic event will be posted which happened on the same day but years ago. The illustrations will all be done in a Moleskine 2008 Daily Planner.” Yesterday’s entry commemorates the 1964 opening of Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip with this image:

Today the blog remembers the 1966 debut of the television show Batman:

Very cool.

(Thanks Jerm.)

NEH announces funding for Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities.

A Visit to Yesterland – The Discontinued Disneyland. “Did you ever wonder what happened to Disneyland’s Mine Train, Flying Saucers, or Indian Village? These and other attractions, restaurants, and shops are now collected in Yesterland, a theme park on the Web.”

The Museum of Bad Album Covers. “Currently displaying 156 awful album covers!”

1990 Mac ad deemed fake. (Via Crunchgear.)

This is kind of creepy—it reminds me of Michael Jackson’s 1991 Black or White video, which is creepy on many levels—but it’s also kind of cool. Eggman913‘s 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art provides a compelling and potentially telling history of the evolution of Western female portraiture in the space of three minutes.

It would be great if we had artists, titles, and dates to go along with the music and images, but even without them the video provides an incredibly rich visualization of how both painting and perceptions of women have changed since the Renaissance. Professional digital historians could take a lesson from this slick amateur effort.

I’m sure many of you noticed the recent controversy over Google’s use of Spanish surrealist Joan Miro’s work in a logo commemorating the 113th anniversary of the artist’s birth. Intended by Google as a “tribute” to Miro’s “extraordinary contribution,” the artist’s family and their representatives at the The Artists Rights Society nevertheless cried foul and demanded Google remove the logo. Without admitting any copyright violation, Google complied with the family’s request.

A lot has been made of the implications of this brouhaha for artistic freedom. But I’m worried about the implications for popular history-making. Commemoration is one of the most common and important ways the non-professional public produces and understands history. This is especially true among the business community, which should not be undervalued as a producer and disseminator of historical information. The “anniversary edition” and the “birthday sale” are among the most widespread and most visible forms of historical expression in contemporary culture.

Miro was not the first person Google chose to commemorate with a special logo. These commemorative logos bring a little bit of history to literally millions and millions of people in a single day, many more than professional historians can ever hope to reach. Next time it wants to honor someone from the past, will Google remember the Miro incident and pass? That would be a grievous instance of found history lost.