Celebrate the public domain with the during the week of March 10! Works from Frida Kahlo, the Marx Brothers, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and more all entered the public domain this year, meaning they’re free of copyright and can now be reused by anyone.
The public domain plays an important role in society by ensuring everyone can benefit from creative works and make their own contributions that build off of what we already have. In the United States, works enter the public domain 95 years after they were published, meaning anything published in 1929 is now in the public domain. That means works like "A Room of One’s Own," "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Sound and the Fury" – all published in 1929 – are now in the public domain. Other works, such as those produced by the U.S. federal government and datasets, are always in the public domain.
“Artists are commonly inspired by the work of others and find new ways to make their own contributions,” Scholarly Communications & Social Sciences Librarian said.
At the University, that includes researchers who produce new knowledge based off of public domain works. For instance, Jared Bok, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, has used data, which is in the public domain, in his research, noting using public domain work has inspired new research ideas not just for himself but for his graduate students as well.
“In many instances, by building on the established contributions of others, it helps scholars like myself to avoid having to reinvent the (data) wheel,” Bok said.
Erin Edgington, chair of World Languages, noted that the public domain helped her access materials for her research on 19th Century French-Canadian literature, which is now mostly out of print.
“As a scholar of nineteenth-century French(-Canadian) literature, I'm lucky to be able to rely on public domain material in most of my research,” Edgington said.
Recent research products by University faculty that have been created thanks to the public domain include:
- Zeynep Altinay - . 2024, Social Science & Medicine.
- Kari Barber – . 2019, documentary.
- Jared Bok - . 2022, Review of Religious Research.
- Erin Edgington - . Coming out in 2025, McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Patrick File - . 2019, University of Massachusetts Amherst Press.
- Renata Keller - The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War. In press, UNC Press.
- Ethan Ris - . 2022, University of Chicago Press.
The Libraries’ will also offer several events to help celebrate the public domain. Instructors are encouraged to offer extra credit to their students for attending. Students will be provided with proof they participated.
- College Coasters: Remixing Public Domain Art – March 11 at 10 a.m. and again on March 14 at 2 p.m. in the . Participants will make coasters while learning about how they can reuse and adapt public domain works.
- Wikimedia Edit-a-Thon – March 13 at 3 p.m. in MIKC 114 (Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center). Help spread access to public domain images from the University Special Collections and Archives by uploading these images to Wikimedia. Participants are asked to register for a free Wikimedia account ahead of time.
- Watch scenes from public domain movies – All week starting March 10 in the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center Library atrium, check out scenes from movies that have entered the public domain, including Mickey Mouse shorts.
To learn more about these events and the public domain, check out the or contact Teresa Schultz.
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