There are many resources on the World Wide Web that are in the public domain (see Wikipedia:Public domain), and therefore are freely usable on Wikipedia and its sister projects without legal restrictions. Note, however, that wherever public domain resources are used on Wikipedia they should be properly attributed, just like any other source (see Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Plagiarism).
This page is intended as a helpful guide to public-domain resources.
Caveats and notes
- The Wikimedia Foundation is based in the United States and accordingly governed by United States copyright law, which tends to be broad. Still, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations. (See Wikipedia:Copyrights, Wikipedia:Non-US copyrights, and Wikipedia:Copyright situations by country).
- Most works prepared by an officer or employee of the US government as part of that person's official duties (see Copyright status of works by the federal government of the United States) are public domain, but that is not true of most works prepared by state government officers or employees, or to foreign governments. For example, in many countries that are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, Crown copyright is standard.
- The United States intellectual property law firm of Bromberg & Sunstein LLP (now Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP) created a flow chart in 2002 which is helpful in determining whether a given work is in the public domain in the United States. The flowchart is from 2002 and so reflects the state of the law in that year.
- Please don't data dump! The resources below are valuable, but many are also old (with antiquated style and sometimes factual errors), dependent on context, sometimes written from biased points of view, and otherwise are not in themselves good encyclopedia articles. If you copy material from these sources, please do not simply dump it verbatim – instead, take the time to verify the accuracy of the information (by checking more recent scholarly work); properly attribute the material; format and wikify the material (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout).
- The minimum that an editor must do is to tag any public domain sources dumped into the wiki with an attribution template. For example, if you include {{CIA World Factbook}}, it expands into:
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
See Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles (note that this lists templates for both public domain and non-public domain sources) and attribution templates. Attribution templates are extremely helpful to other editors; it allows them to easily locate articles that use a particular public domain source, by using the "What links here" feature on the template page.
Dictionaries
Mathematics
- Biographies of mathematicians – from a 1908 history of mathematics. See the discussion at Wikipedia:Rouse History of Mathematics
- 10 British Mathematicans in PDF / 10 British Mathematicans in TeX Ten British Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century, by Alexander Macfarlane, published 1916. (Alexander Macfarlane died in 1913.)
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
Biography
- (US Federal Government) Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774 to present ({{bioguide}})
- Note: the images on bioguide may or may not be PD. Their copyright notice is at [1].
Historical
- Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas (check Usage statement and verify public domain status)
- America As It Was – a huge resource for vintage postcards in the US, organized by state. Any postcard first published in the US before 1978 without an explicit copyright notice is PD. Lots of photos, aerial views, and maps of many US locations.
- Historical Maps from the Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. As a courtesy, wherever these maps are used on the project they should be attributed to the University of Texas Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin." While the historical maps are public domain, not all records held by the Library are public domain.
- Lectures in Medieval History – Lecture notes on medieval Europe by Dr. Lynn H. Nelson, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Kansas: "I might add that I assert no proprietary interest in these materials but offer them freely for public use. You may copy them, reproduce them, or do whatever you wish with them non-commercially." The proper template is Template:PD-Nelson.
- History of Canada
- Early Images of Canada: Illustrations from Rare Books – "hosts 550 searchable images (mostly engravings) from Library and Archives Canada's Rare Book Collection. All of the images are taken from books, often exploration or missionary narratives, published before the year 1800."
- Canadian Illustrated News: Images in the news: 1869–1883 – "selection of almost 4000 images of people, places and events across Canada and around the world" from the Canadian Illustrated News, a newspaper published from 1869 to 1883 in Montreal and significant for its use of halftone photographs.
- Digital Archive, Toronto Public Library – "The Digital Archive includes rare historical pictures, maps, manuscripts, ephemera and digitized books from our Special Collections".
Ancient History
- Internet History Sourcebooks
- Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities 1875 edition; completely public domain, except for the occasional note by the Web transcriber, identified as "Thayer's Note(s)".
- Alexandrian Book of Shadows (this link can no longer be found at this URL; many online copies exist, of varying reliability)
Language and linguistics
- A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology (José Ángel García Landa, University of Zaragoza, Spain. Includes several hundred bibliographical lists on linguistics).
- Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech by Edward Sapir is a classic introduction to Linguistics. Originally published in 1921.
Political science
- (US Federal Govt.) Library of Congress Country Studies An online version of the Library of Congress Country Studies with information on 101 countries, including detailed histories.
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
Architecture
National Park Service Heritage Documentation Program {{PD-USGov-Interior-NPS}}
Library of Congress
- American Memory Home
- Built in America HABS/HAER Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933–Present
- Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935–1955
- Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) Not all images displayed in this catalog are in the public domain
- Searching HABS/HAER/HALS
- Prints & Photographs Online Catalog Home Page – Search and Collections List
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)
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."
Computer science
- (US Federal Govt.) NIST Dictionary of Algorithms, Data Structures, and Problems: Huge, high-quality resource. All entries are in the public domain except for a few that carry an explicit copyright notice
- Public domain lecture notes: "Introduction to Computer Science", "Data Structures" and "Analysis of Algorithms"
- The Jargon File Eric S. Raymond's definitive work on geek-speak
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.
US federal 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 US 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 US 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 necessarily 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 term & conditions of use for government web site content (2004) by the CENDI Copyright & Intellectual Property Working Group.
Works of the United States federal government:
- United States Census Bureau – United States Bureau of the Census has an enormous range of facts and figures of Census data, often useful when fleshing out articles about cities and states
- International Data Base (IDB) – The Census Bureau's collection of international/world data.
- CIA World Factbook – The World Factbook from the Central Intelligence Agency contains basic facts on all the countries of the world; however, the most recent data for some statistics may be up to several decades out of date.
- Background Notes from the United States Department of State include "facts about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty." State.gov copyright statement: "Unless a copyright is indicated, information on State Department websites is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission. Citation of the U.S. State Department as source of the information is appreciated."
- Library of Congress Country Studies – Web version of the Library of Congress Country Studies, a series of works published from 1988 to 1998 by the Library of Congress's Federal Research Division. The Country Studies/Area Handbook Program was sponsored by the Department of the Army and at present includes 101 countries and regions. The copyright statement: "Information contained in the online Country Studies is not copyrighted and thus is available for free and unrestricted use by researchers. As a courtesy, however, appropriate credit should be given to the series."
- 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.
- 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]
- ETOPO2 – a whole-planet digital elevation model dataset with sample points a 2 arc minute intervals
- GTOPO30 – a whole-planet digital elevation model dataset with sample points at 30 arc second intervals – the data files can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20111017031724/http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/gtopo30/global/
- Blue Marble, a set of high-resolution cylindrical-projection raster images of the Earth derived from satellite data
- GEOnet Names Server – GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) database of geographic feature names and locations for locations outside the United States. The database is the official repository of foreign place-name decisions approved by the BGN.
- DEMIS World Map Server generates maps using public domain data with no usage restrictions
- The National Map – The National Map (TNP), managed by the United States Geological Survey's National Geospatial Program (NGP).
- United States Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System claims to have almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features within the United States
- National Archives and Records Administration – The official archive site of the federal government of the United States. This is a work of the US government.
- Online Veterans and Military Documents from NARA – deals with military history of the United States
- List of presidential libraries and links to their websites. Each president since Herbert Hoover has a library, which is a depository for records and documents (much of it public-domain material) relating to each president and his presidency. Each is affiliated with NARA.
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress – The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress includes biographical information every individual who ever served in the Continental Congress or United States Congress. This is a work of the US government. The proper template is Template:Bioguide.
- Occupational Outlook Handbook – The Occupational Outlook Handbook, published by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, contains descriptions of a great many occupations
- Uniformed services
- Multimedia from the United States Department of Defense, including thousands of news photos, photo essays, video clips, and other multimedia
- Army Media – United States Army images, audio, video and written content
- Photo collection from the United States Navy
- Video collection from the United States Navy
- AFLink Art Archive from the United States Air Force, including a searchable database of items such as Air Force posters, emblems and shields, historical records, cartoons and weapons]
- Photos from the United States Air Force
- Searchable photo bank from the United States Marine Corps
- Visual Information Gallery from the United States Coast Guard, including photos, graphics, video, audio, art, and leadership portraits
- FEMA Photo Library from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
- FEMA Multimedia including video and audio
- EPA Newsroom records – Includes documents and multimedia
- 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.
- Speeches and testimony of National Transportation Safety Board board members and staff
- Publications of the Headquarters, United States Army Corps of Engineers – Included are United States Army Corps of Engineers records such as engineering manuals, pamphlets, design guides, and standards.
- Publications Index of the Bureau of Reclamation, including Hydraulic Laboratory Reports, research reports, and engineering manuals and monographs
- Image search on search.usa.gov
- Federal Information Processing Standards home page
- Department of Defense Single Stock Point for Military Specifications, Standards and Related Publications (DODSSP) – see also United States Military Standard
- NIST Data Gateway – Access to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientific and technical data.
- Catalog of US Government Publications – From the US Government Printing Office
- Sound from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service; copyright statement: "The following sound clips are public domain and may be used without prior permission. If possible, please credit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."
Non-US federal government
- Philipine Government (Republic of the Philippines)[1]
Solar energy
- Library of public domain images of operational Solar Power projects (-This link is broken not found)
- 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/ ).
Law
- Black's Law Dictionary, 2nd Edition (1910) – Public domain.
- Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Edition (1856) – Out-of-copyright edition of Bouvier's Law Dictionary
Science, medicine, and technology
General resources
- Public domain databases of interests to scientists{dead link}
- List of Scientific and Technology databases{dead link} many of which are in the public domain.
Chemistry
Climate
- World Monthly Surface Station Climatology, 1738-cont almost 200 MB of weather data from over 4700 stations starting in 1738.
Geology and Earth science
- (US Federal Govt.) USGS Mineral Resources Program – "The Mineral Resources Program provides and communicates current, impartial information on the occurrence, quality, quantity, and availability of mineral resources."
- (US Federal Govt.) NASA Earth Observatory Glossary
- (US Federal Govt.) Geodesy for the Layman
Astronomy
- (US Federal Govt.) Space Educators' Handbook
- (US Federal Govt.) NASA glossary of terms – appears to be in the PD, please check
- (US Federal Govt.) NASA DICTIONARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS FOR AEROSPACE USE (originally NASA report SP-7, written in 1965, some pages updated since then: may not be fully up-to-date)
Biology and zoology
- (Aveiro University) DiseaseCard.org"DiseaseCard is an information retrieval tool for accessing and integrating genetic and medical information for health applications."
- (US Federal Govt.) US Forest Service Fire Effects Database Database of current information on a wide variety of tree, shrub, grass, mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian species found largely in North America – great reference material
- (US Federal Govt.) National Center for Biotechnology Information, unless otherwise specified (for example the text of most of the books in the book section of the site is not in the public domain unless it is published by NIH or the NCBI) the material on this site is in the public domain (the NCBI asks you to cite NCBI as the source if you use it, see copyright and disclaimer information), of particular relevance for Wikipedia (as a source for text and images) are
Medicine
- (Aveiro University) DiseaseCard.org"DiseaseCard is an information retrieval tool for accessing and integrating genetic and medical information for health applications."
- (US Federal Govt.) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "In general all information presented in these pages and all items available for download are for public use. However, you may encounter some pages that require a login password and id. If this is the case you may assume that information presented and items available for download therein are for your authorized access only and not for redistribution by you unless you are otherwise informed."
- (US Federal Govt.) MedlinePlus at the NIH copyright terms here indicating materials are in the public domain unless otherwise indicated
- (US Federal Govt.) NIH public domain publications on urology
- (US Federal Govt.) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) "The public may reproduce without permission information from the National Institute of Mental Health Web site, except for documents that state another copyright policy applies to them."
- (US Federal Govt.) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "Unless otherwise noted, the contents of the FDA Website (www.fda.gov)--both text and graphics—are not copyrighted. They are in the public domain and may be republished, reprinted and otherwise used freely by anyone without the need to obtain permission from FDA. Credit to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the source is appreciated but not required."
- (US Federal Govt.) Glossary of HIV/AIDS-Related Terms 4th Edition: a Department of Health and Human Services project collaboratively sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- (US Federal Govt.) USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory Contains nutritional information on a large number of comestibles. From FAQ: "USDA food composition data is in the public domain and there is no copyright. We would appreciate it if you would list us as the source of the data and when possible we would like to see the product which uses the data or be notified of its use."
- (US Federal Govt.) A large collection of public domain information sheets on various neurological disorders
- Note: This Google search for "nih publication "not copyrighted" site:.gov" should help uncover more NIH public domain documents
- Gray's Anatomy – 1918 edition of Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body (with illustrations).
- (US Federal Govt.) US National Toxicology Program: copyright notice here, typical US government terms
- Asthma genetics – Public domain data
- (US Federal Govt.) Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (needs positive confirmation before use: some diagrams within the text say "used by permission", which implies that they are copyrighted – however, the rest appears to be written by US government employees)
- (US Federal Govt.) The NCI thesaurus is a massive public domain repository of definitions of medical terms
- (US Federal Govt.) The Genetics Home Reference http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/ghr/ is a wide resource on human genetics
- (US Federal Govt.) The NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms defines a large number of medical terms, mostly related to cancer.
- (US Federal Govt.) The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences [2] is a federal medical school. Some material is available on its website, but much is not. Contacting the public affairs department could enable a significant amount of material to be made available to the public.
- Article Index 1879–1922 of the Crittenden Automotive Library
Classics
Libraries
- European Library – The European Library is a consortium of 23 national libraries – it is a search engine/portal to library content
- Authorama Public Domain Books: Texts delivered on XHTML1.0 Strict pages
- Online Book Initiative
- The Online Books Page: A comprehensive index of books available on the Internet. Most are public domain, but not all; check for copyright restrictions
Culture
- UNESCO Public Domain Resources and Virtual Library
- Public Domain Comedy Heaven A growing collection of free to download public domain video comedy. Including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton.
Literature
- Project Gutenberg – Project Gutenberg provides over 34,000 free public domain texts.
- 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.
- The 1911 version of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
- The Household Cyclopedia
- The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, generally short entries, mostly about people and places; probably the only encyclopedia that does have entries about characters from Dickens' works, but not about fruit.
- 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.
- Fully proofread Public Domain Books – Collections of books on finance, cooking, encyclopedias, etc. mostly public domain.
- A Pronouncing dictionary of Biography and Mythology contains a large number (10000+) short WP: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).
- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
- New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors – Aims to tracking all authors of books published before 1964, and some more recent authors, for determining copyright expiration
- A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology (José Ángel García Landa, University of Zaragoza, Spain)
- OVO New works in the public domain since 1987. Magazine format (PDF and OpenOffice.org formats).
- Brewer's Reader's Handbook, published in 1898, states that "the object of this Handbook is to supply readers and speakers with a lucid but very brief account of such names as are used in allusions and references, whether by poets or prose writers". Contains many short articles, some on obscure topics. None of its articles cite their references.
- LibriVox – free public domain audio books
Music
- Public Domain Information Project – Hosts information about public domain music – see information about the website
- Bach Cantatas and Other Vocal Music
- Internet Archive: Open Source Audio (most under licenses but some in the public domain)
- The Choral Public Domain Library: a comprehensive library of public domain choral sheet music, downloadable in PDF, MIDI, and other formats
- Mutopia: a collection of public domain sheet music
- Musopen: free public domain music
- Public Domain Project: free public domain music from historical 78 rpm records
- Project Gutenberg music section
- MusicBrainz: a database of structured metadata about audio releases
- The Werner Icking Music Archive
- SheetMusicFox
- The International Music Score Library Project: a growing library of public domain sheet music, largely available as PDFs of scans.
Religion
- 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 comprehensive 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, German, etc.
Christianity
- Christian Bible – Most modern translations are still in copyright; out-of-copyright translations may be found at Wikisource:Bible:
- Biblioþēce – Old English Bible; only partially complete, but with some modern translations as well
- John Wycliffe's Translation (1380s)
- William Tyndale's Translation (1526)
- Bishops' Translation (1568)
- Douay-Rheims (1610)
- Sacredbible.org hosts several texts and scans of versions of the Douay-Rheims Bible.
- King James Bible (Authorized Version) (1611)
- King James Bible, Oxford Standard Text (1769)
- American Standard (1901)
- World English Translation (in progress since 1997)
- Wikisource Translation (in progress since 2006)
- The Tertullian Project: A collection of ancient and modern texts by and about the ancient Latin Christian writer Tertullian
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library – The Christian Classics Ethereal Library focuses on Christian texts, especially those from the Early Christian period. Note their copyright statement
- The Catholic Encyclopedia - The Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1913.
- Several 19th-century out-of-copyright Christian biblical dictionaries – Note that these will need to be checked for accuracy (make sure statements have not been superseded by more recent academic work) and to keep a neutral point of view
Hindu
- The Basic Texts of Hinduism and Veda
- Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Hindu Philosophy
Jewish
- Jewish Publication Society Bible translation (1917) – complete Tanakh on Wikisource
- The Jewish Encyclopedia – The Jewish Encyclopedia (published between 1901 and 1906) contains over 15,000 articles (including many articles with illustrations) in 12 volumes on Jews and Judaism – It is now out-of-copyright and useful for the project, although dated (it does not cover any of the very significant events which occurred after the encyclopedia was published, such as the Holocaust and the creation and history of the State of Israel)
Islam
Occult
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."
- Freetems: Photos, music and other PD content, user-contributed and moderated or gathered from around the web.
- Public domain vectors: Vector graphics in public domain.
References
- ^ "Philipine Government] (Republic of the Philippines)". www.gov.ph. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
See also
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.