It’s that time of the year: Public Domain Digitization! We’ve pulled a list of titles from our collections that will fall into the public domain on January 1, 2025, and now we need your help selecting the 25 items that we will scan to celebrate Public Domain 2025.
Why do we celebrate the public domain, and what is it anyway? The public domain is a state in which a creative work belongs to the public as a whole and is not protected by copyright law. When copyright protection for a creative work expires, it falls into the public domain, where anyone can use it to create new works.
Authors and artists have long used the public domain as a source of raw material and inspiration. In fact, there is an argument that our entire copyright system is created to feed and grow a thriving public domain. This is why we have celebrated each year since 2019: