LibGuides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Public Domain

Why would I want to look for course materials in the public domain?

Unlike openly licensed materials, public domain materials have no legal restrictions on their use (though of course, there is an ethical, academic obligation to cite your sources). Public domain materials may be right for your course if you are looking for older materials such as art, literature, or other historical materials that may help provide context for more current work in your discipline.

What's in the public domain?

Works in the public domain include:

All works published in the United States before 1924 (as of 2019)
Works by an author who has died more than 70 years ago
Some works created between 1924-1964 that were not renewed - research of copyright office records is required to determine this
Works dedicated to the public domain (this is different than creative commons licensing!)
United States government works

For more details on when copyrighted works may enter the public domain, see the chart at the link below.

Public Domain & Copyright Term Chart - Cornell University
A handy chart for understanding the length of copyright for any item.

Public Domain and Open Culture Sites

Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University
The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance.
Communia: The European thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain
The COMMUNIA Thematic Network has been working for over three years at becoming a European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment - as well as related topics, including, but not limited to, alternative forms of licensing for creative material; open access to scientific publications and research results; management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works).
Digital Public Library of America
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used.
Europeana
Multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitized items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections.
Google Cultural Institute
A partnership between Google and over 250 museums, archives, and cultural heritage institutions. Collections include more than 40,000 images in high-resolution gigapixel format. Images include both those in public domain and those still under copyright so be sure to check the status of each work.
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Over 4000,000 public domain images. Part of the Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC) Initiative.
National Gallery of Art - NGA Images
Search, browse, share, or doenload over 43,000 images. With the launch of NGA Images, the National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are now available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. Users do not need to contact the Gallery for authorization to use these images.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
More than 800,000 digital objects, including drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, and rare books.
Open Culture
"The best free cultural and educational media on the web." Contents includes Audiobooks, eBooks, Language sources, Textbooks, MOOCs, Movies, and online courses.
OpenGLAM: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums
OpenGLAM is an initiative run by Open Knowledge that promotes free and open access to digital cultural heritage held by Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.
The Public Domain Review
An online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of works from the history of art, literature, and ideas with a focus on works which have now fallen into the public domain.
Rijksmuseum - Amsterdam
Interactive website that has more than 2000,000 high resolution images with online tools that allow users to manipulate, clip, and remix the images.