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Why Collect Portraits of Logicians?

It would be nice to be able to show students pictures of the people who did the work we're asking them to study. It would be even nicer if these portraits showed the scientists in question at close to the age they were when they proved their results: it makes it easier for students to identify with them and see them as role models. We are here collecting such portraits. The Open Logic Text will eventually include these portraits, and instructors can use them in their classroom resources (eg, presentations). It will also make it easier to add attractive illustrations to other resources, esp. online reference materials (Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, etc.) and to research presentations. All these uses are now hampered by (a) the low quality of images currently available online and (b) the possibility than any use of such images constitutes copyright infringement. (In the US, classroom use of images falls under fair use, but there are jurisdictions where there are no fair use or fair dealing exception for educational purposes. Moreover, making copyrighted images publicly available, e.g., for download, may be an infringement of copyright even if it is intended only for the purpose of education or research.)

In order to make a portrait of a logician available openly online, three things have to happen:

1. Obtain a high-quality electronic image of the logician, preferably at close to the time of their work.
2. Get the rights holder to assign the image to the public domain, or to agree to license it under an open license.
3. Make the image available online.

Obtaining High-Quality Images

Possibilities for obtaining high-quality images:

• The institution where the logician worked, or the library/archive that holds their papers, will generally also have (and have the rights to) portraits. There usually is a formal procedure in place for requesting scans or photographic copies of these portraits.

• Others who may be sources of images:

  • Relatives
  • Biographers
  • Students

Requesting Assignment of Rights

In order to legally be able to make the portrait available online, the rights holder has to agree to it. They may

• assign the image to the public domain, or
• license the image under an open (Creative Commons) license.

Depending on the jurisdiction, putting a work into the public domain may actually be difficult to do. However, rights holders can assign it to the public domain for all intents and purposes by waiving all rights in all jurisdictions. Creative Commons provides a CC0 tool for this purpose: http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

Licensing the image under a Creative Contents license allows rights holders to reserve some rights and put some restrictions on the use of the images (e.g., users must credit rights holder, may not use it for commercial purposes, must share any derivative works under the same license). It relieves potential users of having to request permission every time the image is used (and the rights holder of having to deal with requests). It also clarifies what conditions a user must satisfy and how credit is to be given.

Making Images Availabe

Once rights are obtained, the image itself may be uploaded to a website or service with the respective license noted. We recommend making images available on Wikimedia Commons.

• Instructions for contributing images to Wikimedia Commons
• Permission requirements for uploading to Wikimedia Commons
• Information on file types, with the upshot: for Wikimedia Commons upload of scanned photographs, PNG is the preferred format.

For ease of use (e.g., hotlinking to various sizes, sharing, making image galleries, etc.) we will also upload them to the Open Logic Flickr account.