Block
Rights and sources
Everything here is public domain or openly licensed. That is four different situations, not one, and this page separates them.
The four bases
| 17 U.S.C. 105 | A work of the United States government. No copyright ever existed in it. |
| Expired copyright | Published in the United States before 1929. Copyright existed and has run out. A scan of it does not create a new one. |
| CC0 | The holder waived copyright. Nothing is required in return. |
| CC BY and CC BY-SA | Licensed with conditions. Credit is required, so it is printed with the work rather than buried in a footer. |
Source by source
18Each page also states its own basis in the provenance block at the foot of it. Where the two ever differ, the page is the one to trust: it describes the actual record.
| What | Published by | Basis | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topographic sheets | United States Geological Survey | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. The historical topographic map collection is published without restriction. |
| Place names and coordinates | Geographic Names Information System, USGS | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. The national gazetteer is a public data product. |
| National Register listings and nominations | National Park Service | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. Nomination case files are federal records. |
| Surveyed structures and their histories | Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal survey. The Library states no known restrictions on publication. |
| Depression and wartime photographs | Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information, Library of Congress | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Made by federal photographers as federal work. Photographers are credited by name on the page. |
| State, county and township boundaries | Census Bureau TIGERweb | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. Every map drawn on this site is built from these boundaries rather than embedded from a commercial provider. |
| Fire insurance atlases | Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress | Public domain by age | The volumes republished here were printed before 1929, so United States copyright has expired. The Library publishes them with no known restrictions. |
| County and town history narrative | County and town histories published before 1929, digitised by the Internet Archive | Public domain by age | Every volume republished here was published in the United States before 1929, so United States copyright has expired. Digitisation does not create a new copyright in the text. Each page names the exact volume, its author and its year, and links to the scan. |
| Museum specimens of animals, plants and fungi | Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), aggregating museums and herbaria | CC0 or CC BY - per record, filtered | Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Photographs are checked one at a time and any that are non-commercial, no-derivatives or carry no readable licence are refused. The holding institution is named on every entry. |
| Photographs from libraries nationwide | Digital Public Library of America, aggregating libraries, museums and archives | Per item, filtered; metadata CC0 | DPLA metadata is dedicated to the public domain (CC0) and may be used commercially. The images themselves belong to each holding institution and carry their own rights: only public-domain, CC0 and CC BY items are shown, and non-commercial, share-alike, no-derivatives and unreadable licences are refused. Each figure credits its provider and links the record. |
| Historical aerial photographs | Aerial Photo Single Frames, U.S. Geological Survey via EarthExplorer | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. The frames were flown for the federal government between 1937 and 1989 and carry no copyright. The captions credit the U.S. Geological Survey with the date and scale, the credit form USGS asks for. |
| Wildfire occurrence 1992-2020 | USDA Forest Service Research Data Archive (Short, K. C., 2022) | US Government funded - no permissions or fees | The dataset's own metadata records access constraints of None and states the data can be used without additional permissions or fees, asking only that it be cited. It is cited on every page that shows a figure from it. |
| Newspaper records and page text | Chronicling America, Library of Congress, and the National Digital Newspaper Program | Public domain by age | Only titles and issues the Library publishes as free of known restrictions are used. The page text is the Library's own machine reading of the microfilm, reproduced without correction, and every page links back to the Library's scan of the issue it came from. |
| Mines, quarries and prospects | Mineral Resources Data System, United States Geological Survey | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. The Survey publishes the national mineral resources table as an open data product with no restriction on reuse. Every working shown links to its own record in the Survey's database. |
| Storm reports and their written accounts | Storm Events Database, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | 17 U.S.C. 105 | Federal work. The narratives are written by National Weather Service forecast offices in the course of their duties and are quoted here verbatim rather than summarised. |
| Population, elevation and identifiers | Wikidata | CC0 1.0 (waiver) | Wikidata statements are released into the public domain by waiver. No attribution is required; the item is linked anyway so a reader can check the figure. |
| Photographs of listed properties | Wikimedia Commons | CC BY, CC BY-SA, or public domain - per file | Each file carries its own licence, which is read from the Commons API before the photograph is used. Anything non-commercial, no-derivatives, or unreadable is refused. The photographer and licence are printed with the photograph, because attribution is a condition of the licence. |
| Brief introductions on the "From the record" section | Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted briefly | One or two sentences of a Wikipedia article may open the section, quoted rather than rewritten, with the article and the licence named beside the quotation. This is the only place Wikipedia prose appears; everywhere else the article is linked, not copied. |
What is deliberately not used
| Wikipedia article text | CC BY-SA. A short, attributed quotation may appear in a property page's "From the record" section, with the article and licence named beside it. In other contexts articles are linked rather than copied; structured facts come from Wikidata, which is CC0. |
| Non-commercial and no-derivatives images | Refused at ingest, along with any file whose licence cannot be read. Silence is not permission. |
| Anything published in 1929 or later | Refused unless its publisher states it is free of restrictions. The year is a hard gate, not a judgement call. |
If something here is wrong
If you hold rights in anything on this site and believe it should not be here, or if a credit is missing or wrong, write to info@blockbefore.com with the page address, the material you mean, and the basis of your claim.
Every request is read and checked against the source record the page cites. Where a claim is substantiated, the page is corrected or the material removed promptly. Where the material is a work of the United States government, or its United States copyright has expired, or it is used within the terms of the licence its publisher attached to it, we will say so and explain which of those applies.
A factual error is worth reporting on the same address whether or not anyone holds rights in it.