Wikipedia:Public domain resources

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There are many resources available on the net that are in the public domain, and therefore freely usable without restrictions for Wikipedia content.

This page is intended as a list of only true public domain text resources.

Contents

[edit] Caveats

  • Because there is no concept of public domain in Japan's copyright law, even though the materials are claimed public domain, there can be some restrictions such as about commercial use, which has a conflict with GFDL.
  • Unlike the United States many other countries' central-government-generated content is not in the public domain. Most English speaking commonwealth countries exert Crown copyright. Indian government sites also seem to be copyrighted by default. [1] Please make certain that in any particular jurisdiction government agencies will allow you to copy materials without permission.

[edit] U.S. copyright expiry flowchart

The U.S. law firm of Bromberg & Sunstein LLP provide a flow chart (with footnotes) which describes the criteria for when a work enters the public domain in the United States.

[edit] Please don't data dump!

The resources below are valuable, but many are very old, context-dependent, written from biased points of view, and otherwise are not in themselves good encyclopedia articles. They contain some useful information, but also sometimes an antiquated writing style and innumerable errors of fact.

So please, if you copy material from these sources, make sure you take some time to verify the accuracy of the information: edit, update, introduce, or otherwise produce a good article out of it rather than just dumping it here verbatim. But if you can't do that, put it in anyway because somebody else will come by and tweak it. Wikipedia articles are living texts, because everybody has the power to edit them. An entry that starts out incorrect, as a stub or even as something very insane, will eventually be tweaked and evolve into something much more sophisticated.

[edit] Please include an appropriate template for the reference in article

Please use a template for the reference in an article that you create (or modify), if it exists. For example, if you include {{CIA WFB 2000}}, it expands into:

This article contains material from the CIA World Factbook (2000 edition) which, as a US government publication, is in the public domain.

This allows us to easily locate articles that use a particular public domain source, by using the "What links here" feature on the template page: Template:CIA WFB 2000, e.g. Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:CIA WFB 2000.

A list of templates for sources (including public domain sources) can be found at: Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles (note this may include templates for non-public domain sources).

[edit] Encyclopedic or general resources

[edit] US Government

Title 17 USC §105, Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works, provides that "Copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government," defined in Title 17 USC §101, as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties." Therefore, only those works solely authored by US Federal Government employees are not protected by copyright in the United States.

Works produced by contractors and grantees for the federal government are generally protected by copyright. In such cases, the Government is granted a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license in the work to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, and to allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. The Government’s license does not place these works in the public domain. Additionally, a copyrighted work for which the copyright has been transferred to the Government by assignment or bequest is not in the public domain.

Look for copyright and permissions notices on U.S. Federal Government publications and websites. However be cautioned that government agencies often advise that in the absence of a copyright notice, users may assume their information is not copyrighted. This contradicts the copyright law as amended in 1989, when the United States joined the Berne Convention for the purpose of harmonizing domestic copyright law with international copyright standards. While use of a copyright notice and registration was once required as a condition of copyright protection in the United States, it is now optional, and a work is not in the public domain simply because it does not have a copyright notice.

For further discussion, see: DON’T KEEP THE PUBLIC GUESSING: BEST PRACTICES IN NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT AND TERMS & CONDITIONS OF USE FOR GOVERNMENT WEB SITE CONTENT (2004) by the CENDI Copyright & Intellectual Property Working Group. http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-4website_policy.html

[edit] Canadian Government

[edit] European resources

  • The European Library is a service of the Conference of European Librarians. It is a portal offering multilingual federated searching across and within the collections of the national libraries of Europe. It will be the starting point organisationally and technically for a European digital library encompasses museums, archives and other holders of digitised and digital cultural heritage material.

[edit] Dictionaries

[edit] Other

This website contains the complete contents of the 12-volume Jewish Encyclopedia, which was originally published between 1901-1906. The Jewish Encyclopedia, which recently entered the public domain, contains over 15,000 articles and illustrations. This online version contains the unedited contents of the original encyclopedia. Since the original work was completed almost 100 years ago, it does not cover a significant portion of modern Jewish History (e.g., the creation of Israel, the Holocaust, etc.). However, it does contain an incredible amount of information that is remarkably relevant today.
We are considering inviting the Internet community to help us update the encyclopedia -- if you are interested in volunteering (as a writer, editor, etc.) please join our Mailing List. By putting this important work on the Internet, we hope to improve the quality of Jewish information available online -- and stimulate new discussion. Therefore, we have "Discussion Forums" and "Internet Links" sections which allow our visitors to converse and identify related websites.
  • ibiblio.org is a major repository of information: "the public's library and digital archive". All collections on ibiblio are assumed to be in the public domain unless otherwise noted. Check for copyright notices on any material you wish to use.
  • A Pronouncing dictionary of Biography and Mythology contains a large number (10000+) short NPOV biographical entries, many of which could be copied and pasted to form stubs (due to its focus it contains information on many 19th and 18th century figures not yet covered in Wikipedia).
  • Classictexts.net: Hyperlinked and searchable texts of 1600 ancient and modern public domain books on CD. Derived from Folio Corp. e-texts with transcription and publication dates going back to the early 1990s.

[edit] Philosophy, mathematics and natural science

[edit] Astronomy and astrophysics

[edit] Biology

[edit] Chemistry

Note: PiHKAL and TiHKAL, formerly listed here, are not in the public domain, and should therefore not be listed here.

Some parts may be non-public domain -- can anyone check this in detail with the webmasters, please?
According to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/copyright.html, specific NLM Web sites containing protected information provide additional notification of conditions associated with its use. It's in PD by default.

[edit] Climate

[edit] Geology and Earth science

[edit] Mathematics

[edit] Philosophy

  • Fair Use Repository - combination of PD and fair use texts, as indicated at the bottom of the page.

[edit] Physics

  • Physics for Free has two public domain physics books by former Yale professor Frank Firk: one about basic physics, one about groups and particles

[edit] Statistics

[edit] Social sciences

[edit] Anthropology

[edit] Archaeology

[edit] Biography

Note: the images on bioguide may or may not be PD. Their copyright notice is at [2].

[edit] Economics

[edit] Geography and maps

  • (US Federal Govt.) CIA World Factbook Contains basic facts on all the countries of the world
  • (US Federal Govt.) U.S. State Dept.: Background notes on the countries of the world. Also see their copyright notice, which, as you'll see, places material that is not explicitly copyrighted in the public domain
  • (US Federal Govt.) [3] - Library of Congress area country studies. It explicitly states that it is not copyrighted
  • (US Federal Govt.) CIA World DataBank II - global outline map data (coastlines, rivers, national boundaries) in vector format, hosted by Dave Pape at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (but note that this dates back to 1972, so many national boundaries are out of date) Now (mostly?, entirely?) obsoleted by VMAP0, see below.
  • (U.S. Federal Govt.) VMAP0, a vector map of the world, an updated version of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) Digital Chart of the World. See also the article VMAP0. [Note: the original NIMA data package distributes the public domain dataset with a small amount of copyrighted information provided as overlays: these should be filtered out if you are going to use this as a public domain resource]
  • (US Federal Govt.) ETOPO2 - a whole-planet digital elevation model dataset with sample points a 2 arc minute intervals
  • (US Federal Govt.) GTOPO30 - a whole-planet digital elevation model dataset with sample points at 30 arc second intervals - the data files can be found at ftp://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/gtopo30/global/
  • (US Federal Govt.) Blue Marble, a set of high-resolution cylindrical-projection raster images of the Earth derived from satellite data
  • (US Federal Govt.) the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) www.nima.mil GEOnet Names Server contains approximately 3.88 million named geographical features outside the United States, with 5.34 million names [4]
  • (US Federal Govt.) the USGS Geographic Names Information System claims to have almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features within the United States
  • Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas (check Usage statement and verify public domain status)
  • DEMIS World Map Server generates maps using public domain data with no usage restrictions
  • [5] USGS National Map Viewer, configurable. includes topos.
  • America As It Was - a huge resource for vintage postcards in the U.S., organized by state. Any postcard first published in the U.S. before 1978 without an explicit copyright notice is PD. Lots of photos, aerial views, and maps of many U.S. locations.

See also: Wikipedia:Map

[edit] History

[edit] Ancient History

[edit] History of science and technology

[edit] Language and Linguistics

[edit] Political science

[edit] Psychology

  • Classics in the History of Psychology is a collection of classic public domain works in psychology collected by Christopher D. Green: see here for a note about the copyright status of the individual documents in the collection

[edit] Applied arts and sciences

[edit] Agriculture

[edit] Architecture

National Park Service Heratige Documentation Program {{PD-USGov-Interior-NPS}}

Library of Congress {{PD-USGov-Interior-HABS}}

[edit] Business and industry

  • (US Federal Govt.) US Energy Information Agency - statistics and info on energy industry (mostly US but some stuff for the world) - they appreciate but do not require acknowledgement (copyright info here)

[edit] Communication

  • (US Federal Govt.) Federal Standard 1037C, a telecommunications glossary, appears to be mostly in the public domain based on these principles, and is a source of a large number of bits of useful material. A few items are derived from copyrighted sources: where this is the case, there is an attribution to the source. Note: most non-trivial 1037C articles are now incorporated into Wikipedia -- please also note that only those articles that have substantial content and are from 100% public domain sources are suitable for inclusion in the Wikipedia
  • (US Federal Govt.) DISA site about commercial telecommunications standards From the site: "This site is maintained by the Commercial Standards Division of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to provide information about the current status of commercial telecommunications standards."

[edit] Computer science

[edit] Education

  • ERIC Digests This site has several thousand education articles. They were all produced by the US Government ERIC Clearinghouse system. All of them are also in the public domain and can be used freely for content at Wikipedia.

[edit] Employment

[edit] Energy

From the World-wide Information System for Renewable Energy (WIRE), which is a service provided by the International Solar Energy Society (ISES - http://www.ises.org/ ).

[edit] Engineering

Informational pamphlets, engineering manuals, engineering design guides, engineering standards, ...

[edit] Law

[edit] Medicine

[edit] Military

  • (US Federal Govt.) U.S. Department of Defense - All of these files are in the public domain unless otherwise indicated. However, it is requested to credit the photographer/videographer as indicated or simply "Department of Defense."
  • (US Federal Govt.) U.S. Navy, Info on specific ships
  • (US Federal Govt.) Air Force Link
  • (US Federal Govt.) U.S. Marine Corps
  • (US Army Space & Missile Defense Command) [6], launch site information, space launch company information, environmentl and technical information on launch sites.

[edit] Public affairs

  • (US Federal Govt.) Federal Emergency Management Agency: Not sure how much of this is useful, but anyway it's under the same terms as the U.S. Department of State site: all in the public domain unless it carries an explicit copyright notice.
  • (US Federal Govt.) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: copyright notice here, typical U.S. gov't terms. Does have some good information for people patient enough to find it.
  • (US Federal Govt.) Voice Of America - All text, audio and video material produced exclusively by the Voice of America is public domain. However, some images and graphics are licensed for use and covered by all applicable copyright laws.
  • (California State Govt.) California Department Of Corrections is in the public domain unless otherwise noted. It has information and photos of California prisons such as Pleasant Valley State Prison.

[edit] Transport

Wikipedia:Porting Vectorsite articles

[edit] Culture

[edit] Arts and Entertainment

[edit] Classics

[edit] Cooking

[edit] Libraries

[edit] Literature

[edit] Music

[edit] Recreation

[edit] Religion

[edit] General

  • Internet Sacred Text Archive Online archive containing numerous etexts of books in the public domain (in the US) on religion, mythology, folklore and related topics. Copyright status of the source edition (copytext) of each work is analyzed and relevant bibliographic data, including images of title pages and versos, provided.
  • Biblioteca Elettronica Esoterica Esonet.org A comphrensive resource of free esoteric ebooks, articles, electronic papers about esoterism, religions, mythologies. The site is in italian but are present ebooks also in spanish, french, deutch etc.

[edit] Christianity

[edit] Judaism

[edit] Islam

[edit] Occultism

[edit] Sports

[edit] Photos

[edit] Miscellaneous

  • Greg Goebel's IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: Science, technology, military history, introductions to classical and relativistic physics.
  • Infoanarchy: a weblog dedicated to copyright issues. All original material is in the public domain, although some redistributed articles may be under copyright.
  • "Ethical treatment for all youth" a website that documents therapy and detention of children and juveniles for consensual sexual activity. Author wrote to me in a personal email: "Certainly, I intend everything at my site to be in the public domain, to be used freely by anyone else. Of course, I would appreciate it if people who use it would link to my site, since I can use all the exposure I can get."

[edit] To be filed

please file these resources under the appropriate topic headings above

  • There are no more entries to be filed at the moment

[edit] Sources for finding public domain resources

Here are some web searches which may prove useful in the discovery of U.S. Federal Government and other public domain documents. Please note that you must still manually verify that documents are in the public domain. Please note also that not all sites in the .gov domain are U.S. federal government sites: some may be U.S. state or other local government sites.

Google searches for links or exact phrases:

The Creative Commons initiative may become a valuable new resource for Wikipedia authors. The project provides a "wizard" for licensing information under various open content licenses (including the public domain, which is not a license), and also features a directory of these works. (See also Creative Commons License)

See also: Source attribution messages

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Lists of general resources

[edit] Lists of U.S. Government resources