A healthy and robust Public Domain needs libraries and archives

Preservation and digitisation are crucial to the continued importance of the Public Domain and libraries and archives are important players in the Public Domain.

Cross-posted from the Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition (ALACC) blog.

A postcard featuring a coloured black and white photo of Queen Street, Brisbane, circa 1908. Public Domain. Full attribution information is available at the end of this blog post.

As a new year starts books, music, visual art, films and other content move into the Public Domain. New Year’s Day is also Public Domain Day. 1 January each year is when these cultural objects join the countless volumes of content no longer protected by copyright that is available for everyone to share, use and adapt. Yet, for a lot of material in the Public Domain the biggest barrier to its productive reuse is obscurity. After all, you can’t make use of things you don’t know exist.

All copyright-protected material ultimately becomes part of the Public Domain, but a lot of the artefacts in it are held by libraries, archives, museums, galleries and cultural collections. Libraries, archives and other cultural institutions are charged with collecting, curating and preserving important cultural items so that future generations have access to their cultural heritage and can learn from them. These tangible links to the past provide insights into political and societal changes and the evolution of ideas.