On [[en:Wikipedia:Public domain image resources]], there is a nice list of sources, but it is not easily searchable. It is not clear which if any of these sources could provide me with an image of (fill in something). Because of this, we will find people either search long for images, not do it at all, or fail to find them. It's made even worse by sources such as http://www.radiobras.gov.br/ that someone added recently - the site has some very useful content, but searching the site is a nightmare.
I would propose to start a place where we can keep descriptions of images and image searches, a search on which could then be used to get free or copyleft images for a certain subject. A nice start in this direction is made by the GIMP image archive, but: * It only contains a few sources, and does not have the possibility to add others * The original image descriptions are not included or linked to, so people when giving descriptions cannot use these, which means that for example portraits are worth much less because one does not know who is being portrayed.
Could it be made a wikiproject to make such information available? My idea would be a wiki (we're wikipedia aren't we?) where one could either upload the photographs and add its description and copyright status, or use a 'normal page' to link to the place where the image are, and again add a description. Adding keywords would also be a good idea. If a number of people would work on this for some time, we would thus get a nice, searchable collection of public domain and copyleft images.
Andre Engels