Where is the Public Domain?
"The public domain is not a place. 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. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner."
(U.S. Copyright Office Definitions, 2013; emphasis added)
As of 2013, works created before Dec 31, 1923 have all fallen into the public domain (PD). As copyright law has been amended several times in order to extend copyright protection (to the point that no American work will enter the PD until the 95-year limit hits works created since Jan 1, 1924, which will be on Jan 1, 2019) works can be designated Open Access, which allows for new works to enter the PD immediately, often through the use of Creative Commons licenses.
A thorough table of what is and is not in the public domain as of Jan 1 2013, from Cornell.
Use These! Works in the Public Domain
- The Online Books PageA guide to the massive quantity of books in the public domain. This search engine, by John Mark Ockerbloom of University of Pennsylvania, searches several collections of online e-books in the PD, including those digitized by Project Gutenberg and HathiTrust.
Works that are in the public domain are free to reuse and repurpose. These works enter the public domain once their term of copyright protection has expired; more recent works can also be designated for public use at their time of creation.
- Bush Memorial Library Public Domain GuideA list of sites that provide work in the public domain, including images, music and sounds, and film.
Disclaimer
The information presented here is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice.
This Image is in the Public Domain!
"The New York Sunday herald. May 3rd. (1893-1897)"
NYPL Digital Gallery
Books on the Public Domain in Pratt Institute Libraries
Images in the Public Domain
These images want to be used and you should most definitely do so, but please cite the source institution. Though many of the public domain images are long out of copyright, citing the source institution (that is, the museum/library/etc. wherein the original image/material is held) makes it easier for others to track down the originals of the images you use. If you use any of these images in a paper, you must include a full citation of the image in your bibliography.
- Creative Commons SearchCC Search allows you to search specifically for media that can be used for commercial purposes and/or be modified and reworked, through search engines of sites that use Creative Commons licenses, such as Flickr, YouTube, Europeana, and others.
- NYPL Digital GalleryThe New York Public Library provides access to more than 800,000 images from their holdings, "including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more."
- National Gallery of Art Digital Images22,000+ open access images from the collections of the National Gallery of Art.
- LACMA CollectionsThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art's newly updated collection of more than 20,000 images in the public domain.
- Rijksmuseum Digital Collections289,278 images from the Rijksmuseum collections.
- Wikimedia Commons"A database of 17,287,110 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute"
- British Museum - CollectionsMore than 2 million images available for most uses; requires account for download.
- Yale University Library Digital Collections500,000+ images, many of which are in the public domain.