Once upon a time, in my youth, I was told that "knowledge is free..." -- a foundation upon which was built the idea that with study, hard work and honesty you could not only earn a living but perhaps accomplish something worthwhile. I was taught that intelligence, calloused hands and strength of character were the means to measure the worth of a man or woman. In these days when trivial ideas are patented, when copyrights last for a hundred years and all around you is talk of lawyers and money, you may begin to think that the only thing important is what you own -- but this is not so; the meaning of your life is not a measure of what you can grab and hold, it is defined by what you do.

What is WPClipart?

An educational resource that began its life as "AbiClipart" in 2003. (Originally a package of clipart my school-age daughters could use... which I later posted online.) The collection is a safe way for children to search for images for use in school projects. Of course, other folks also find plenty of uses for the clip art and photos.

Contact

If you wish to contact me for requests, to point out any errors or for any other purpose, feel free to email me (Paul Sherman) at psherman2001@gmail.com

About the collection . . .

The project started as a "safe" collection of clipart for my kids. Their middle school used AbiWord, and they were often searching for clipart that was both safe and copyright-free. Since this proved to be both difficult and hazardous (since image searches often yielded some very untoward photos) I decided to create a simple collection for their use. My background as both a photographer and a programmer lent itself well to the project, I put it online with my software for others to download and as the months passed it became very popular.

I made thumbnail pages and put up some Google ads, (made a bit of change every day), then suddenly the Google image search engine spidered the site and my server was a bit overwhelmed. After fielding 20-30k hits a day for a year or so I ended up putting the collection on a dedicated remote server, and the ad revenue takes care of the expense. And by using good image tagging and submitting XML sitemaps to Google with each update, the custom search function really helps track images down.

I did not expect to MAKE any money with the collection, so you won't see tons of ads and deceptive links or anything "tricky" to try to get clicks. The collection is self-suporting, and making it safe, useful and quick-loading are the ultimate goals. There is a Google ad atop each page clearly marked as such, so kids and everyone else can come by and find what they are looking for without being forced or tricked into viewing product information they are not interested in.

I would LIKE to do this full-time, but I am not sure I could "pay the bills" with the amount of revenue that comes from ads on an image site -- not without turning it into a ad-fest, and that would defeat the purpose of having the site in the first place . . .  The shear volume of traffic, however, may someday make this possible. -- I'm not complaining!

Image Details

  Some of the clip art were made by me, others are re-works of public domain clips (like several I made into page borders and backgrounds), and many photographs are also of my taking -- but the vast majority of images were acquired from several sources, all documented on the "Legal" page. One of the large sources was OpenClipart - which were converted from SVG and in many cases resized and/or further edited. Many clips from other sources had their density and saturation levels adjusted to what would print well on a typical home/small business inkjet -- openning up the midtones and eliminating large areas of shadow to prevent blocking, bleeding backgrounds to white . . .

Summary

  Above all else these images, illustrations and photos are Public Domain. Use them for private use, for commercial use -- without any restrictions whatsoever. Attribution is not required. Links are not required (although appreciated.) They are truly free.

  It is my hope that students and others will use the images to make their ideas clearer ; but I also hope that in some cases folks will build upon the images or have an idea sparked by them which will lead them to create new, different and exciting things.