How To Find Public Domain Materials Online
Public domain works is available on the web, it just take time to find it. The reason this type of content is so popular is because it basically can be used, reproduced and incorporated without restrictions.
As you are probably aware most published content such as music, software, books and photos have copyrights that require permission and usage grants.
In the case of U.S. Government documents most are considered to be part of the public domain, unless otherwise stated. That is why it is important to consider what country the public domain material is coming from.
One thing you will find when you try to find public domain books through the search engines that some people are trying to sell the sources to you for a fee. I guess if you do not want to do the research yourself it may be worth the cost of admission, but on the other hand it is really not that hard to find the sources for free.
I like to research so for me it was a challenge to see if I could find anything and it turns out that if you know where to look you can find a treasure of free resources to use anyway you want to.
Top Places to find Public Domain Resource Information
Okay so lets get started.
Remember I am not an expert in this area and pretty much this is just my opinion on the subject. Also this article does not cover every aspect of the public domain intellectual property rights it is just an overview.
Websearch.about.com - this is a section written by Wendy Boswell an about.com guide and I will have to say that I think she is one of the best researchers on the web, basically she provides resources on how to find just about anything online.
websearch.about.com/bio/Wendy-Boswell-13134.htm
Wikipedia commons - has a large database of media files that have been contributed from a variety of sources for nature, science, society, images, sounds and videos. commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Google Book Search - here you can find a library of scanned books, and many of the public domain books can be downloaded. Under the advanced book search link you want to enter the date of the books you want anything before the year 1923 will be part of the public domain.
books.google.com/advanced_book_search
Project Gutenberg - is one of the oldest sources on the web with thousands of books that come in a variety of formats such as the Kindle and Sony Reader.
gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Questia - is one of my favorites because of the selection is not just books but it includes magazines, newspapers, journals in the humanities and social sciences.
questia.com/library/encyclopedia
Amazon Books - this is an untapped resource, if you go to the amazon store and under the books category type in public domain it will give you a list of helpful resources some are even free if you have a kindle reader.
amazon/public-domain
The Mutopia Project - has free music downloads, All of the music on Mutopia may be freely downloaded, printed, copied, distributed, modified, performed and recorded.
mutopiaproject.org
Public Domain Resource page:
Here is a helpful guide of public domain resources provided by wikipedia, the list includes everything from Dictionaries, Mathematics, Historical, Language and Linguistics, Political science, Psychology, Architecture, Business and industry, Communication, Computer science, Education, U.S. federal government, Non-U.S. federal government, Solar energy, Law, Science, medicine, and technology, Classics, Music, and Religion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_resources
It will be easier to find what your looking for if you put the exact phrase you want. For instance if you want images or photos then put that in the search box.
If you want books or literature than use that and if you want content from a specific genre such as "U.S. Government" or "public domain cookbooks" then make sure you are specific because otherwise you will get a general search and it will pull up things you don't want. I am sure if you look you can find tons more.
Happy hunting!
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