Digital Collections

Digital Collection

Public Domain Digitization Initiative

A curated selection of books entering the public domain starting in the year 2020 (or those published in 1924) that have been chosen by the librarians in the Special Collections Department at Princeton’s Firestone Library. All of these books were important milestones in literature, although only two each year have been recognized as canonical within a North American literary landscape. The others celebrate the narratives of women, Queer, and/or people of color to challenge and expand notions of the canon.

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Every year, under US copyright law, the intellectual ownership of creative material produced 95 years earlier shifts from an individual author or artist to the general public. Commonly, this is referred to as a work “entering the public domain”. The process of entering the public domain signals a new transition within the lifecycle of copyright, as explained by Stanford Libraries’ Copyright and Fair Use guide, “Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it”. 
This new era of public ownership is significant for many reasons, but chief among them is that it allows anyone to use and build upon the content of this material as they wish without fear of copyright infringement (with some exceptions). Publishers can release new editions, scholars can create new compilations and the public can rediscover long-forgotten works. 
A significant portion of material held in Princeton’s Special Collections falls under the purview of public domain, however, every year new items are added to that pool.By making these items digitally available and highlighting them here, we hope to enrich common understandings of the twentieth-century literary landscape, inspire readers and scholars to explore works previously unknown and challenge ourselves to dive deeply into the multiplicity of voices held in our stacks.

An evergreen DPUL online exhibition was also created and is added to annually as an online companion by Jennifer Garcon, Librarian for Modern and Contemporary Special Collections and Emma Sarconi, Reference and Outreach Specialist.

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Copyright

Princeton University Library claims no copyright governing this digital resource. It is provided for free, on a non-commercial, open-access basis, for fair-use academic and research purposes only. Anyone who claims copyright over any part of these resources and feels that they should not be presented in this manner is invited to contact Princeton University Library, who will in turn consider such concerns and make reasonable efforts to respond to such concerns.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], [Sub-collection name (if applicable)], Public Domain Digitization Initiative Collection, Princeton University Library.

Romanization

Please refer to the Library of Congress Romanization tables when searching the collection.