Public Domain
Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner. "According to the U. S. Copyright office, "A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection."
Many works in public domain were published in the United States before 1923 because that was the cutoff date used by the law to determine copyright. Compilations or collections of public domain works may be copyrighted.
Works that generally fall into the public domain meet the following criteria:
- the term of copyright for the work has expired
- the author failed to satisfy to meet the copyright standard
- U.S. Government works (pamphlets, laws, building codes, etc.)
- facts
More information about works in the public domain can be found at:
- Welcome to the Public Domain - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
- The Public Domain Review – Online journal dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available on the web
Finding Works That are Free or in the Public Domain
Some organizations have digitized public domain material and make it available for download or publish free material.
Some sites that have digitized public domain material include:
- Hathi Trust: http://www.hathitrust.org/
- The Internet Archive: http://archive.org/
- Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/
To find Open Access resources recommended by the library:
- Go to the A-Z Databases page.
- Change the "All Databases Types" drop down menu to "Open Access."
- Open Access resources are also designated with little orange pen lock symbol next to the title.
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