Creative Commons

Monte Amiata from La Foce

This was a really interesting 'thing' for me, as the aspects of copyright law which relate to the use of images have always been a subject which resulted in me saying: 'if in doubt, don't'.  We fairly regularly receive requests from library users who want to source images for various projects, and we have to warn them not to infringe copyright; although I already knew of Creative Commons this 'thing' has given me an opportunity to investigate it more thoroughly, particularly the different types of licence which apply to 'free' images on the internet.


During our summer holiday, caravanning in Italy, we visited a lovely garden in southern Tuscany which had been created by Iris Origo.  During the 1930s Iris, with her husband, an Italian aristocrat, had moved to La Foce in the Val d'Orcia and set about the task of improving the lives of the impoverished farmers in the valley.  During the war, she and her husband not only took in many children made homeless by the bombing of cities in northern Italy, but also provided food and shelter for Italian and allied soldiers escaping from the Germans.  You can read about her wartime experiences in War in Val d'Orcia: an Italian War Diary 1943-1944

Villa La Foce and Garden