Public Domain Part Two

Before I begin I should point out that I have had to edit out a lot of material. If you would like a copy of the unexpurgated (I had to get that word in) version of the book then drop me a line and I will email you either a copy or the link to where you can download it.

Chapter 3: Your Journey Into The Public Domain

There are countless public domain resources online, including directories and databases that house categories for all public domain material and media, from images to audio files.

Many of these websites also require a fee, either in terms of membership or on an individual purchase basis. Whether you are interested in exploring the public domain yourself, or you would rather take advantage of one of these services, this chapter is devoted to helping you begin your journey into the public domain.

Your first step is to determine what type of public domain material you are interested in.

Are you considering using content-based material, including poetry, novels, short stories or plays, or are you primarily interested in images, portraits, graphics and paintings?

There is also audio, midi and even lyrical material available within the public domain as well.

Once you have a good idea as to what type of content you are interested in finding, you can easily begin your search, keeping one last thing in mind:

When you begin exploring the public domain, you have two different choices. You can either obtain public domain directly or indirectly.

When going about it directly, you are pulling material out of the public domain for personal evaluation. You are responsible for verifying your right to use the material, however the benefit to direct search is that you are not required to comply with any outside restrictions.

When utilizing an online search database or directory service, many of these public domain resources require that you comply with their license restrictions, meaning that because they host the images, content or material, they are able to attach additional restrictions on the material, often minimizing your ability to resell it or even modify it yourself.

This can become quite confusing, after all, isn’t the whole point of using public domain mainly focused on your ability to use free content material however you wish?

That is the true spirit of the public domain, however because these services spend a lot of time and money researching, extracting and hosting the material for you, they are justified in requiring that you read and follow their guidelines. While not every resource site will restrict you in your ability to modify or resale the material, make sure that you read the fine print prior to downloading and using the content.

For example, the Digital Gallery, applies specific restrictions on the material from the public domain that they host and distribute.

While you can always find the SAME public domain material if you search directly yourself, by using their service you must comply with their requests.

Keep this in mind when planning out how you intend to use public domain and make sure that these restrictions (if any) do not affect your plans.

My personal strategy is to use the online services as a guideline. They help me find titles, media names, file types and with that ready-made research, I can create a swipe file of material that I am interested in.

I then go directly into the public domain and extract this content myself, so that I am not restricted by anyone’s guidelines.

For public domain imagery, I recommend browsing through the Library of Congress, at http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html

You will find everything from paintings to postcards up for grabs. Just make sure that you verify the time stamp as having been created prior to 1978 unless you are going to personally verify that the material is copyright free (if created after 1978).

The Digital Gallery also provides an abundance of imagery based material, carrying over 1.5 million public domain images:

http://www.digitalgallery.nypl.org

When it comes to finding documents, including books, poetry, screenplays, scripts and even novels, the Gutenberg Project is infamous for their vast collection of public domain works. Their database search is user-friendly, and their collection is always expanding to include additional material.

You can begin exploring the public domain by visiting their site at http://www.gutenberg.org , or by reading their introduction guide at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

The Gutenberg Project is such a popular public domain website simply because of their organized collections and ease of use.

You can begin searching through recent downloads, recent updates, or by title, category or topic.

You can also choose to volunteer to be part of the Gutenberg Project team where you can evaluate public domain books, offer proofreading services or even reformat material into new digital works.

The public domain doesn’t just offer content in the English language either. If you are interested in catering to other languages or countries, you can often find literature produced in Chinese, Hungarian, Polish, Mayan and even Russian, or you can download English titles and hire a translator so you can penetrate new markets easily.

You can also use their built in internal search engine to locate books based on specific topics or categories to speed up your search.

You could also search between 1923 and 1963 paying notice to the fact that a small portion of work may be copyright protected, and require further research to evaluate your right to use it.

Note: Only a small percentage of material created between 1923 and 1963 contains copyright protection, so don’t overlook this time period altogether. Just keep in mind that you should never automatically assume that the material is available for use and spend a bit of extra time evaluating material from this specific timeframe.

iBiblio, available at http://www.ibiblio.org is a fantastic tool for exploring the public domain quickly, easily and at no cost. It offers a very clean, simplistic search process allowing you to easily locate hundreds of books and images.

Bookfinder is yet another valuable resource for finding public domain content and is available at http://www.BookFinder.com

With Bookfinder, you can easily enter in a book title or author’s name to locate all material associated with your search query. You can also choose to search through recent searches (conducted by other users on the site) or based on category to get a good idea of what is popular.

For example, if you were interested in searching for information relating to the “dog training” industry, you would enter in “dog training”.

Note: If you know the author’s name or a specific book title that you are interested in, you can enter it in the search box as well. Otherwise just using keywords will quickly reveal hundreds of available books and material.

Now, before you hit the Search button, within the publication year menu, enter in “Publication Before 1923″. This will ensure that you only search for material that is free of any copyright and readily available within the public domain.

That’s it! You will have an incredible collection at your fingertips and just by using pre-defined search queries that limit the search dates, you can eliminate any need to conduct further research verifying a copyright date or publication date.

Just search for material prior to 1923 and you’re good to go!

Whenever you find public domain that you are interested in using, you can choose to download it directly from any of these distribution agents, however one thing to keep in mind is that you will be required to pay a nominal fee for this material as it’s being researched and collected for you.

The great thing about this however, is that with sites like BookFinder.com and AbeBooks.com they’ve done all of the work for you. They not only research the public domain regularly to locate additional material for all available topics, but in many cases they create a digital version of the material for you!

Imagine just how much easier it is to create ebooks that you can turn around and resell, if 100% of the work has been done for you, including verification of the material being free of copyright AND the document or manuscript being transformed into digital format.

These services will save you an incredible amount of time while also ensuring that you are only using public domain content that is freely available, eliminating any potential problems from mistakenly using copyright protected work.

Another chapter another day another dollar as the saying goes.

‘Till next time

Philip
http://philipjubb.com
http://internationalarticledirectory.com/
http://certainscripts.com

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