Public Domain Champions: HathiTrust’s Copyright Reviewers

We celebrate the accomplishments of our copyright reviewers this year and thank them for continuing to open access to public domain books in HathiTrust throughout 2024.  The copyright reviewers focused on opening United States monographic works; Canadian, Australian, and UK books and government works; and on cleaning up access for items with old publication dates.

The Copyright Review Program opened 27,000 items in HathiTrust after determining they are in the public domain. We also determined 5,700 items to still be in copyright, but we now have data on when their copyright expires and we can open them at that time. 

Every January 1st, we reprocess our trove of historical reviews to open access where author death dates have newly expired their terms.  This year, our historical data allowed us to open an additional 4,000 items on January 1st.

Learn more about how HathiTrust manages copyright statuses for the 18+ million items in its collection.

Thanks to the member libraries that contributed in-kind staff time to advance our mission and provide lawful access to as much of the collection as possible.

California Digital Library

Duke University

McGill University

McMaster University

Pennsylvania State University

Temple University 

University of Alberta

UC Los Angeles 

UC Santa Cruz 

UC San Diego

University of Illinois

University of Kentucky

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

University of Minnesota

University of Michigan

University of Notre Dame

Wake Forest University

West Virginia University