Macdonald-Kelce Library Blog

Public Domain 2025

Every year, a new collection of works including books, films, comics, and music enter the public domain. Creative work, depending on what type of media it is, typically expire from copyright 95 - 100 years after first publication. In January 2025, books from 1929 and sound recordings from 1924 are available to use and adapt. 

What does this mean and why should you care?

Works in the public domain are not subject to copyright, which means you (yes, you!) are able to use and remix characters and stories to create new content. Are you a Popeye fan? Good news, Popeye is now in the public domain! You can already find some hilarious and questionable reimagenings of Popeye on YouTube (we'll leave it up to you to look them up). 

Here are some works now in the public domain that we have in the Macdonald-Kelce Library and on the web:

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Call Number: Main (2nd Floor) ; PN471 .W6 & DVD

ISBN: 0156787334

Publication Date: 1989-12-27

"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister--a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have a steady income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create. 

 The Broadway Melody - The first sound film to win an Oscar for best picture. 

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Call Number: Main (2nd Floor) ; PS3515.E37 F3 2003

ISBN: 9780684801469

Publication Date: 1995-06-01

Ernest Hemingway's classic novel of love during wartime. Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield, this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Hemingway famously rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. A classic novel of love during wartime, "A Farewell to Arms stands, more than eighty years after its first appearance, as a towering ornament of American literature" (The Washington Times).

The Cocoanuts - The first Marx Brothers Film

Singin in the Rain - A song made famous by the 1952 musical starring Gene Kelly, written in 1929 by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Here's the DVD to borrow of the 1952 film. 

The Secret of the Unicorn by Hergé; Hergé

Call Number: Main (2nd Floor) ; PZ7.7.H47 Se 2011

ISBN: 9780316133869

Publication Date: 2011-05-31

The original Tintin graphic novel plus brand-new content. Go "behind the scenes" with the true story about people, places and antiquities that Hergé drew from, filled with fun facts, lots of pictures, and easy-to-read text! In this adventure: Tintin stumbles across a model ship at the Old Street Market. Only it isn't just any model ship-it's the Unicorn, carved by one of Haddock's ancestors, and it holds a clue to finding pirate treasure!

Adaptations are fun and can only be freely created and distributed using works in the public domain. Get creative UTampa.