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Public Domain
Center for the Study of the Public Domain
The Center for the Study of the Public Domain (CSPD), part of Duke University Law School, is a pioneer among university centers examining "the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science, and innovation." Both casual and academic visitors to their website will find much to capture their attention. Readers may like to start with the Public Domain Day section, where they will currently find an approachable explanation of why 2019 is so important for the US public domain, links to some of the works that are now in the public domain, and a section on what could have become public domain if US copyright laws had not been changed in 1978. The CSPD also features several publications that includes two acclaimed graphic novels designed to teach readers about copyright law, as well as a 2016 casebook on intellectual property law -- all free to download. Additionally, readers may want to check out the projects section for resources engaging a variety of disciplines, and the CSPD has several multilingual resources to help citizens worldwide learn about intellectual property and the public domain. Founded in 2002, the CSPD is directed by Jennifer Jenkins, a Clinical Professor of Law at Duke Law School.
Distributed Proofreaders
The venerable Project Gutenberg (last featured in the 07-02-2010 Scout Report) is well-known for providing open access to ebooks of public domain texts. But how do those free ebooks come into existence? The primary way is through Distributed Proofreaders, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2000 to help support Project Gutenberg's mission of digitizing public domain books. This organization offers a web-based platform through which volunteers around the world can easily help convert scanned pages into optical character recognition (OCR) text to create ebooks capable of adapting to different screen sizes. To make the process of proofreading entire books faster and much less daunting, individual pages from each book are distributed amongst many volunteers, hence the organization's name. As of this write-up, their team of volunteers has produced well over 36,000 ebooks, all of which now reside in Project Gutenberg's repository. Interested in helping to make public domain books more accessible to the world? Distributed Proofreaders has a handy walkthrough, extensive wiki, and well-organized forum to help new volunteers get started.
HathiTrust
The HathiTrust Digital Library is a global partnership between research institutions and libraries around the world, all "committed to the long-term curation and availability of the cultural record." Since its launch in 2008, this repository has grown to include more than 16 million digitized volumes, over six million of which are in the public domain. Here, readers can peruse HathiTrust's collection of publications from 1923 that entered the public domain on January 1, 2019. At the time of this write-up, this collection contains well over 53,000 digitized books, journals, reports, sheet music, and more, with content being added regularly. To sift through this trove, visitors can narrow the results by fields such as subject, author, and original format, and they may also search within the collection by keyword. Some of the more well-known texts readers can find in this collection include A few figs from thistles: poems and sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay; A Lost Lady by Willa Cather; a 26-volume edition of works by Robert Louis Stevenson; and the first two volumes of The World Crisis, Winston Churchill's account of World War One.
Internet Archive: Films from 1923
Readers wondering where they might find some of the films that recently entered the public domain under US copyright law should take a look at the Internet Archive's movie collection. At the link above, visitors can watch and download several dozen full-length feature films from 1923, the publication year that most recently became public domain in the US. This collection includes such films as Cecil B. DeMille's lesser-known silent version of The Ten Commandments, the classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney and directed by Wallace Worsley, and Alla Nazimova's avant-garde adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play Salome, as well as several of Otto Messmer's early Felix the Cat cartoons. Although films from this time had no audible dialogue, some in this collection include music. Visitors may use the search bar and filters on the left to further explore the Internet Archive's movie collections, and the entire site is bursting with other content to explore as well.
Public Domain Review
Founded in 2011, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
In particular, as our name suggests, the focus is on works which have now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction. Our aim is to promote and celebrate the public domain in all its abundance and variety, and help our readers explore its rich terrain – like a small exhibition gallery at the entrance to an immense network of archives and storage rooms that lie beyond.
