Everybody's Libraries

The Internet Archive has multiple events in January for Public Domain Day, including a contest for film transformations of public domain works.

Those works themselves often involved transformation. Four songs that joined the public domain in 2024 were written for the stage musical Animal Crackers, which went public domain in 2025. The film adaptation, joining the public domain in 13 days, drops all four, but adds Groucho Marx’s signature song “Hello, I Must Be Going”. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

HathiTrust has created a 1930 Publications Collection for Public Domain Day. It already has over 20,000 items opened, many by their Copyright Review Program, which finds works without copyright renewals.

Over 50,000 more items will open in 14 days, including the book version of The Maltese Falcon. The serial version was in last year’s #PublicDomainDayCountdown, but I haven’t to date found its now-rare magazine issues. I thank HathiTrust and all others bringing the public domain to the public!

Duke’s Center for the Public Domain has its Public Domain Day post out, listing many works joining the public domain in 2026, and explaining the complicated factual and legal determinations sometimes needed to verify their status.

Among the listed artworks researcher Jason Rosenberg found will join the public domain in 15 days is the Jules Rimet cup, created for the FIFA World Cup in 1930. The original trophy is now missing, but anyone can soon freely make their own. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud turned his psychoanalytic attention from the troubles of the individual to those of the world. The book, joining the US public domain in 16 days in both German and English, diagnoses inherent conflicts between individual drives for happiness and society’s needs to tame those drives for survival. Kristin Dorsey suggests ways to read Freud’s work in the context of its time, and in dialogue with works on similar questions. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Franz Kafka‘s work is now known around the world, but it couldn’t be read in English until after he died, and there’s still limited access to good English translations of much of his work. The English Kafka books I list are copyrighted translations generously shared online by David Wyllie and Ian Johnston.

Soon the first English Kafka books will enter the US public domain. The Castle, one of several Kafka works translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, gets there in 17 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

The Cat Who Went to Heaven is among the early Newbery medalists that have aged the best over nearly a century. As Derrick Robinson describes, Elizabeth Coatsworth’s story, drawing upon Buddhist legends, shows the characters’ unfolding empathy and compassion leading to artistic triumph and unexpected redemption. Over time it’s been illustrated by numerous artists, including twice by Lynd Ward. The 1930 edition with Ward’s original take joins the public domain in 18 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Games can’t really be copyrighted as such, but their texts and visual elements can be. That leaves some games in an intellectual property limbo, like Camelot, a strategy game published in 1930 that’s now long out of production. Today’s fans play it with vintage sets, generic grids and chess pieces, or redesigned boards. In 19 days, when copyrights expire for its rulebook, board and piece designs, they can make replica sets to play the game just like in its 1930s heyday. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Twenty Years at Hull-House is Jane Addams‘s germinal account of the settlement house movement she helped found, supporting immigrants and low-income urban residents.

In 1930, Addams published her memoir of the next 20 years, describing her further involvement in Hull-House, her social and political reform work, and her activism for world peace, which won her a share of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. The public domain wins The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House in 20 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Few humor books from 1930 still get laughs from many people now, but 1066 and All That does. W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman don’t just send up English history: they also satirize how history is often taught and remembered, where what really matters, whether Bad Kings or Good Things, is the story of whoever’s on top. (They literally punctuate that when they end as the US replaces the UK as “top nation”.) In 21 days the US also gets it in the public domain, before the UK. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

This blog’s #PublicDomainDayCountdown focuses on works joining the public domain in the United States, but there are also many other works joining it in other countries. Many are described in Wikipedia and in the Public Domain Review.

There is some international overlap. Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) published his first symphony in 1930, a commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 22 days, it joins the public domain both where it was written and where it was first performed.