Wikipedia:WikiProject Free book covers

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This is a project to replace modern book covers used to illustrate articles about books in the public domain. These images are not really acceptable under the "replaceable" clause of our fair use policy,[1] since the books' original covers, title pages, etc. would be free. The list below includes articles that rely on such illustrations unnecessarily, and, where they've been found, links to images that could replace those illustrations.

There are several very good reasons to do this:

  • Our policy states that free images are always preferable to non-free images.[2]
  • Including an image of the first edition is much more encyclopedic; it provides real information about the book, rather than about a modern publisher.
  • It educates our users and the public about the history of these books and about the value of freely licensed material.

Volunteers needed[edit]

You can do any of three things:

  1. Look for articles on books published in the US before 1923 (as well as most other books published before that date as well, and all published before 1909[3]) that use copyrighted, modern book covers as illustrations. Category:Books by year and its many subcategories are useful. Add them to the list if they're not already on it.
    • Another good place to look is Category:Book covers, though it is huge. Some of those images are actually PD images, which are mistagged (only fair use covers belong in that category)--if the images are clearcut public domain, it would be very useful to change the tags on those images.
  2. Look for public domain images--covers, title pages, illustrations, etc.--on the web. Library and academic sites are good. Auction/rare book dealer sites can be good. Project Gutenberg has a few images, not many. Generally, title pages are actually preferable to covers, since they have more content. Add the link next to the book title. Note that only plain reproductive photographs of two-dimensional objects are ineligible to copyright (see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). Modern photos that show only the title page or the front cover are ok, but modern photos that show the old books as 3D objects are covered by the photographer's copyright: do not use those, unless the images themselves are explicitly released under a free license.
  3. Upload a PD image from one of the links below (to Commons only if you're sure it's public domain worldwide; if it's {{PD-US}}, or if you're not sure, upload it to Wikipedia), replace the existing image in the article, and tag the old one {{orfud}}. Leave a gentle note on the uploader's talk page explaining why it's better to use PD cover images for PD books, or just cut and paste the template below, replacing the parameters with the filenames of the old and new images. Strike out the book title on the list, but don't remove it, when done.
    • Possible edit summary: Replacing fair use cover with free image; [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Free book covers|volunteers needed]]
    • Possible talk page message: {{Covermessage|Image:old|Image:new}}~~~~

Useful links[edit]

Books in the public domain using copyrighted book covers as illustrations[edit]

Note: This list is several years out of date. There is no point in striking entries right now, unless someone wants to restart this.

Old list of titles and sources for reference purposes, out of date
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  • Emma replaced with Image:Emma title page 1909.jpg
  • An Essay on the Principle of Population FE title page, also see [3] (linked at [4]) for the title page of Malthus's Prinicples of Political Economy.
  • Ethan Frome FE cover FE cover
  • Eugene Onegin
  • The Europeans serialized
  • Exiles (play)--I believe the cover there--it's Huebsch--is the first American edition, 1918. Can we confirm this?
    • Don't know. But in any case, here's the title page of the very first edition (London: Grant Richards, 1918). Lupo 23:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Saw that. Doesn't the hand make it not a simple copy, and thus copyrighted? Chick Bowen 23:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I would've been bold and cropped it to only use the right page. Yes, the hand may make the image as a whole copyrighted. But the reproduction of this book page surely falls under Bridgeman. I would say their copyright might extend to the hand and the idea of placing it in the lower left corner, but the rest is a normal reproductive photograph. Dunno if that reasoning is sound. It's in analogy to texts: I could publish a collection of PD texts, write a preface, and I would get a copyright on the preface and the selection of texts, but not on the texts themselves. We do similar things with paintings: On Commons:Derivative_works there's even a recommendation to crop away the frame (if shown in an image). Again, I'm not sure whether that's truly sound advice... Lupo 23:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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  • Quo Vadis (novel)
    • Google Books has a 1897 edition of Quo Vadis [15] (with a watermark :-\). Would that be okay? --Iamunknown 06:14, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes. The watermark should be removed in an image editing program. I'll get around to this at some point if no one else does. Chick Bowen 21:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I did this. Once I discovered Google Books's HTML option it got a lot easier. Chick Bowen 21:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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Nonfiction

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Participants[edit]

Note: anyone can participate: this is a Wiki, remember? If you'd like to help without listing yourself here, that's fine. And if you like to put your name here, that's cool, too.

  1. ^ For a lengthy and very useful discussion of the replaceability issue, see User:Chowbok/Robth's RFU Explanation.
  2. ^ And, indeed, the collective character of the project should incline us even further in this direction than policy currently states. As Jimbo Wales has said, "My own view, which is at the extreme end of the spectrum I know, and therefore not (yet) formal policy in every case, is that we ought to have almost no fair use, outside of a very narrow class of images that are of unique historical importance."
  3. ^ See WP:PD for a thorough explanation of the issue. Lupo summarizes it nicely:
    "On the English Wikipedia, the general consensus is to apply the pre-1923 rule to all works, even to works first published outside of the U.S. In the U.S., any work published before 1923 anywhere in any language is in the public domain if it was published with a copyright notice. The pre-1923 rule also applies to works first published outside of the U.S. without a © notice, if they were published in English. It does not apply to works first published outside of the U.S. without a © notice in a foreign language: such works are PD for sure in the U.S. only if they were first published before 1909. All works first published outside of the U.S. in any language without © notice are also PD in the U.S. if they were already out of copyright in their country of origin on the URAA date (January 1 1996 in most cases). See Peter Hirtle's chart, footnote 11.

Free book covers

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