Tag: Public Domain Day

Public Domain Day 2021

Data from the MIT Libraries catalog of holdings published in 1925

In past years, MIT Libraries has celebrated Public Domain Day by digitizing works entering the public domain. This year we’re taking a slightly different approach to celebrating the fact that many new works can now be broadly read, performed, remixed, and adapted as part of our shared cultural heritage. For Public Domain Day 2021, we’re sharing data

In order to decide which books to digitize and highlight each year, we typically start with an export from our catalog of all the titles published in the relevant year. In 2021, that year is 1925. For various reasons, including the immense digitization efforts reflected in the collections of  HathiTrust and the Internet Archive and competing priorities caused by the global pandemic, we’ve decided that the most useful thing we can share is data from the MIT Libraries catalog showing holdings published in 1925. This way, anyone see the full list and use it for whatever purposes they see fit. 

The dataset provides titles, authors, languages, publishers, locations, and subjects for all the titles in the MIT physical collection published in 1925. We’re sharing the original exported file, a cleaned up version, the scripts used to clean the data, and documentation. Our plan is to retrospectively share similar files for a few years that are already in the public domain, and to continue sharing the title lists each year, as more works shed their copyright constraints. We hope sharing many years’ worth of data will allow for interesting longitudinal analysis of MIT Libraries’ collecting and cataloging practices. 

Check out the dataset, and explore the public domain!

Finding female authors in 1924: O.J. Flecker

public domain imageWe decided to focus our digitization efforts on female authors for Public Domain Day 2020 specifically because we knew it’d be a challenge. Looking at the range of books entering the public domain on January 1, there was a conspicuous absence: Of the approximately 1,200 books from 1924 we have in the MIT Libraries, only about 50 were immediately identifiable as having a female author. That wasn’t a good gender ratio, but also, we thought, probably wasn’t the whole picture.

A little more digging frequently revealed that many more women were involved in these books, they just either weren’t taking central billing, or were otherwise hidden. (Ultimately we identified 83 books with a significant female contributor, which is still only 6.7% of the 1924 books, although we didn’t investigate all of the books extensively.)

O.J. Flecker was one of these. This author is credited as “O.J. Flecker, B.Sc. Lond., Teacher of Chemistry at Dean Close School” in A School Chemistry. No pronouns or given name can be found anywhere in the book, and even in the preface, where credit is given to “Mr. D. Ll. Hammick” and “Miss Freund’s Experimental Basis of Chemistry,” the author is enigmatically still just “the author.” Searching, however, revealed a 1922 article which named Oriel Joyce Flecker as an author, and we soon started finding more hints to Flecker’s life.

Records can be found of O.J. Flecker winning school prizes while at the Cheltenham Ladies’ College and passing a matriculation exam for the University of London, which she graduated from with her B.Sc. in 1912. Another connection comes through the Dean Close School, where A School Chemistry tells us Flecker taught. The Rev. Dr. William Flecker was the first headmaster of the school, and most accounts of him note that his son, the English poet James Elroy Flecker, was also educated there.

One genealogy site (which I was unable to verify without paid accounts) lists “Joyce Oriel” as a daughter of William and sister to James Elroy. If correct, it’s saddening how difficult it is to find information on the daughter compared to the son. One biography of James Elroy available online quotes an infuriatingly unnamed “sister,” and even The Life of James Elroy Flecker, from letters and materials provided by his mother (which should enter the public domain next year, by the way) is frustratingly vague about his immediate family. “Joyce,” however, appears in his correspondence, and seems to have had a fond and playful relationship with her brother. If Joyce and our O.J. Flecker are the same, I couldn’t pin it down more closely than that.

So why was O.J. Flecker so carefully gender neutral in her textbook? We can only speculate with regard to Flecker, of course, but women have been publishing as men for centuries in order to avoid the biases of publishers, readers, and reviewers. Jane Eyre was initially authored by “Currer Bell,” a male pseudonym of Charlotte Bronte. Even J.K. Rowling published as “J.K.” at her publisher’s request, because “a book by an obviously female author might not appeal to the target audience of young boys.”

It’s easy to imagine that a 1920s textbook offering a new method of chemistry education would have been subject to similar pressures. The result, however, is that women are largely invisible through a large swath of the scholarly record. It is worth remembering and understanding these women, to the extent that we can.

This post written for Public Domain Day, by Katie Zimmerman, Director of Copyright Strategy for the MIT Libraries

 

Well-behaved women should make history: A review of MIT class records between 1888 and 1893

The women of the MIT class of 1893

“The questions asked in your circular letter are such as to discourage those who cannot name positions of trust, business enterprises or recent publications.”

– Mrs. Annie Ware Sabine Siebert, Class of ‘88 (p.112)

This admonishment appears to explain the lack of detail for women who attended MIT in the class records for 1888 and 1889. The Class Record of ‘88, The fourth book of the Class of Eighty-Nine, and the Thirtieth anniversary report for the class of 1893 were each digitized and made publicly available by the MIT Libraries in celebration of Public Domain Day 2020. They allow us to look back and discover what earlier attendees did after they left MIT. Yet, for women, these records often tell a different story.

When one thinks of women in the early days at MIT, they generally think of Ellen Swallow Richards, who was the first woman to graduate from MIT in 1873. In 1875, Richards established the Women’s Laboratory, where between 1876 and 1883 she instructed over 500 students. In 1882, MIT officially began admitting women to all departments, and between 1881 and 1890, more than one hundred women enrolled as students—19 earned SB degrees. These class records illustrate their increasing attendance, but also offer us a glimpse into who these women were.

Indeed, as Mrs. Siebert noted, the questions the Class of ‘88 were asked produced varying responses. There are some women with brief entries—all noticeably shorter than many of their male peers. Some, such as Mary Hutcheson Page, discuss their work around suffrage. Others, like Marion Talbot and Anne Graham Rockfellow, we know a great deal more about thanks to their work after MIT. For example, Talbot helped to found the American Association of University Women with Ellen Swallow Richards.

The fourth book of the Class of Eighty-Nine is a departure in format, declaring its deliberations “short, and without the assistance of an efficiency expert, they reach conclusions and get results” (p. 3). Rather than including notes of its members, it provides an overview of a recent annual dinner and a list of the members and their last known location.

It is interesting then that the Thirtieth anniversary report for the class of 1893 is almost a synthesis of the two earlier class books, providing an overview of their reunion as well as a compilation of class notes. The number of women in the class is greater and their notes more rich in detail. Efforts were made to include the records of those who had passed, including one memorable note for Nettie Morton Willey.

Willey, while not a graduate of the Institute, attended classes between 1890-92 and 1893-97 before becoming a chemistry teacher at Peabody High School, where she would teach for 25 years before passing. Willey helped found the MIT Women’s Association, renamed in 1964 to the Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA), serving as its secretary and as part of the executive committee. However, the crux of her note, which was submitted by another MIT alumna, emphasizes the lasting friendships she built through MIT, declaring her as having “[a] fellowship with hearts [t]o keep and cultivate” (p. 315). This note seemingly defies exactly what Mrs. Siebert rallied against in her note for the Class of ‘88 record, illustrating that there are traits that go beyond the positions of trust, business enterprises and recent publications, yet are equally deserving of attention. The evolution of the notes over this five year period speaks to this shift in perspective, subtle as it may be, and it is one that allows us to learn more about the women of MIT, both personally and professionally.

This post was written for Public Domain Day 2020 by Alex McGee, Women@MIT Project Archivist

The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson

Martha Dickinson Bianchi wrote of her aunt, Emily Dickinson, “She was not daily bread. She was star dust.” Bianchi’s The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, the 1924 book which MIT Libraries has scanned and made available to all in celebration of Public Domain Day 2020, is neither an accurate account of the poet’s life nor a personal memoir from a family member. This is evident in the photogravure (basically a retouched photograph) of Dickinson by artist Laura Coombs Hill that opens the book. It’s a version of the one known photograph, which she and her sister never liked, to which curls, softer features, and a frilly dress have been added. It was commissioned after the poet’s death, and in the book Bianchi admits it may not look much like Dickinson. This isn’t a book about how Dickinson was, though; it’s about how her family saw her, and how they want her to be remembered.

Bianchi, herself an author and poet, describes her aunt and the community around them from her perspective.  She calls one friend “a gay madcap of a girl” (p. 76), but spends much of the book insisting that her aunt was “perfectly normal” (p. 20) and “perfectly natural, too” (ibid). She replaces the popular image of Dickinson as a death-obsessed reclusive spinster in white with a warm, loving woman who had deep relationships and just happened to really, really like being home. While she glosses over some suspected romantic dalliances, she describes Dickinson’s relationship with a young law student as “a spicy affair.” Maybe this meant something different in 1924?

Be prepared to get curious when reading this book. I found myself searching for more information about almost every relationship described. Wait, this Otis Lord who’s described as a dear friend — wasn’t he the best friend of her father she allegedly was caught canoodling and considered marrying? This beloved sister in law…aren’t those letters kind of romantic? Did Emily just refer to herself using male pronouns? The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson is a fantastic way to rekindle your relationship with Emily Dickinson, while enjoying the familial, 1920s lens through which her niece creates her narrative. Bianchi may not be the final word on her aunt’s flesh and soul, but we can all agree on the fire of her imagination: “She had the soul of a monk of the Middle Ages bound up in the flesh of Puritan descent, and, from Heaven only knows where, all the fiery quality of imagination for which genius has been burned at the stake in one form or another since the beginning” (p. 95).

This post was written for Public Domain Day 2020 by Jen Greenleaf, Librarian for Women and Gender Studies

Celebrate Public Domain Day 2020

Selected images from digitized books from MIT Libraries

You may know January 1 as New Year’s Day, but it is also the day that new works shed their copyright constraints and become available for free reuse. Works from 1924 become public domain in 2020, including Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young, and the first film adaptation of Peter Pan. The public domain allows works to be broadly read, performed, remixed, and adapted as part of our shared cultural heritage.

To contribute to the celebration of the public domain, the MIT Libraries is digitizing 10 books from 1924 from the Libraries’ collections. This year we selected works that show a glimpse of what it was like to be a woman in academia in the early 1900s. Read about early women scholars at MIT in class reunion books from the 1890s, and see what women were publishing in 1924.

The 10 new works will join the MIT Libraries Public Domain Collection later this month, where they will be freely available to read in their entirety. Look out for news posts throughout January highlighting these interesting works. You can also join us in celebrating the public domain at two upcoming events:

Happy Public Domain Day, everyone!

This post was written for Public Domain Day 2020 by Katie Zimmerman, Director of Copyright Strategy for the MIT Libraries.

King’s Blue Book: A sampling of Hawai’ian musical traditions

Kings book of Hawaiian melodies

King’s book of Hawaiian melodies. [Illustrated souvenir collection] by King, Charles E., 1874-1950. Cover page. Public domain via MIT Libraries.

This post is part of the MIT Libraries Public Domain Day celebration. Read the full text of public domain books digitized by the MIT Libraries, explore other volumes, and learn about the public domain at our website.

MIT Libraries’ collections reflect the depth, breadth, and variety of MIT community members’ interests and passions. King’s Book of Hawaiian Melodies is an example of an unexpected treasure lurking in our stacks. Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman, a faculty member at the University of Michigan and a respected scholar in the field, lovingly describes this volume as one of the “bibles” of Hawai’ian music, frequently found in piano benches across the islands. Her blog post chronicles its publication history, with multiple editions issued between 1916 and 1948. (MIT’s copy is the 5th edition, published in 1923.)

But you don’t have to be a scholar or a specialist to appreciate this fun collection of traditional Hawai’ian songs, with lyrics in both English and Hawai’ian and accompaniment arranged for either piano or ukulele. In his foreword, Charles Edward King described this as a compilation of “songs that breathe the atmosphere of the land.” Perfect escapist musical fare for January in Cambridge!

1923’s “Recent Opinions on Modern Vivisection”

Modern vivisection title page

Title page of Some recent opinions on modern vivisection, by Society of Friends of Medical Progress, published 1923. Public domain via MIT Libraries.

This post is part of the MIT Libraries Public Domain Day celebration. Read the full text of public domain books digitized by the MIT Libraries, explore other volumes, and learn about the public domain at our website.

When I first saw Some recent opinions on modern vivisection by competent living authorities in the list of books we were digitizing, it immediately attracted my morbid curiosity. What are these opinions?  Who, exactly, was vivisecting whom in 1923?  And… surely these opinions are negative…?

The pamphlet’s first sentence did not answer my questions, but it is pretty bold: “Vivisection is a vital question involving the health of the civilized world, and everyone should know the truth about it.”

Um, if you say so, pamphlet. Tell me more.

It takes another page and a half of Lovecraftian, slow-reveal horror to actually state the “modern opinion.” That first statement? “On investigation it has been found that almost all the really great men and women who have expressed themselves as opposed to vivisection are dead.”

Did… did you kill them?  Did you… vivisect them?

Joking aside, the predominant argument seems to be that, with recent (to 1923) developments in anesthesia, the benefits to medical knowledge obtained from surgery on live animals (yes, for some partial relief, they seem to be only talking about non-human animals) outweigh the moral and ethical harms, and the rest of the pamphlet cites medical and moral leaders who agree.

One Wikipedia rabbit-hole later, I’ve learned that pro- and anti- vivisection movements alternated sway throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and that anesthesia was indeed developing. Another pamphlet in the digitized collection explains the origins of the society which authored Some Recent Opinions, which was founded in part to combat the antivivisection and antivaccination movements of the time (anti-vaxx movements are apparently not a new thing! I would not have paired them with anti-vivisection, however).

So, propaganda and counter-propaganda? Do the benefits to medical knowledge really outweigh the costs? The Society of Friends of Medical Progress (authors of this pamphlet) certainly think so, while the American Anti-Vivisection Society (founded around the same time, and still active today) certainly do not. “Competent Living Authorities” may disagree.

 

When did it enter the public domain?

This post is part of the MIT Libraries Public Domain Day celebration. Read the full text of public domain books digitized by the MIT Libraries, explore other volumes, and learn about the public domain at our website.

We digitized 100 books published in 1923 because 1923 is the year by which you can be confident that the work is public domain in the US, because the longest possible restrictions will have fallen away. Many works, however, may have entered the public domain years or decades earlier. In this post, I delve into the rights history of one work in our collection to see when it really entered the public domain.

The Atom and the Bohr Theory of its Structure was published in 1923 by the New York publishing house of Alfred A. Knopf. At that time, US copyright was governed by the Copyright Act of 1909, which required creators to meet several requirements in order to grant copyright protection (note: this isn’t true for things created today). The first of these is the copyright notice – which is simply the word “Copyright” (or “Copr.” or “©”) accompanied by the name of the copyright owner and the publication year. As simple as this requirement is, the implications were heavy, since a deficient copyright notice could invalidate the copyright. This is the only place where the publication date appears in The Atom and the Bohr Theory:

Bohr theory_copyright notice

Publication information, The Atom and the Bohr Theory of its Structure, public domain via MIT Libraries.

Because the word “copyright” (or “Copr.” or “©”) doesn’t appear, this book didn’t meet the requirements for US copyright protection, and would have been in the public domain since 1923 when it was published.

Additionally, to maintain the copyright in the book, the copyright would have had to have been renewed with the US Copyright Office in the year prior to the 28th anniversary of its publication, in this case 1951. Searching renewal records is tricky, however, and my search of the renewal records for “Kramers,” “Holst,” “Lindsay,” and “Bohr” (in 1950, 1951, and 1952, just for good measure) didn’t turn up a match for this work. If the work had a valid copyright notice and hadn’t been renewed, it would’ve entered the public domain in 1951.

However, there is a complication. There are clues in the frontmatter that there are prior versions of this book published outside of the US.

Bohr theory_non-US publication

Prior publication information, The Atom and the Bohr Theory of its Structure, public domain via MIT Libraries.

And, indeed, a search of the copyright registration records for 1923 turns up a record of the foreign registration for the original Danish work. The English translation would be a derivative work of the Danish original, and while the translation might be public domain in the US, use of that translation could still potentially infringe the Danish original.

Bohr theory_foreign registration

Foreign copyright registration for Bohrs Atomteori Almenfattelig Fremstillet, in the 1923 Catalog of Copyright Entries. Foreign publication presented a challenge under the 1909 Act, as many found it inequitable to refuse copyright protection to a work properly protected in its home country, and various accommodations have been made over the years for foreign-published works. The most important of these for current purposes was the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA). The URAA eliminated the requirement that foreign-published works comply with US notice and renewal requirements, and restored the copyright in foreign works that had previously been public domain in the US (if they were protected by copyright in their home countries as of the 1996 enactment date of URAA).

If, therefore, we assume that Bohrs Atomteori was protected by Danish copyright in 1996, it could have been public domain in the US  until 1996 before having its copyright restored. The URAA restored the copyright term to the length it would have if all US requirements had been met, which for Bohrs Atomteori would result in a copyright term of 95 years after its 1922 publication, or until 2017. The Atom and the Bohr Theory, therefore, may have been free of copyright restrictions in the US from 1923-1996, and then again as of Public Domain Day 2018, after a complicated copyright story.

Intrigued or confused? Join us at Is it in the Public Domain? during IAP to learn more!

This post is written by Katie Zimmerman, Scholarly Communications and Licensing Librarian. All errors and oversimplifications are mine and this post should not be construed as legal advice. I am indebted to many, many sources, most of them Peter Hirtle, for insight into copyright duration.

Be prepared for the building inspector (in 1923)

1923Rulesbook

Cover of Rules and Regulations for the Construction of Electrical Work in the City of Baltimore, published 1923. Public domain via MIT Libraries.

This post is part of the MIT Libraries Public Domain Day celebration. Read the full text of public domain books digitized by the MIT Libraries, explore other volumes, and learn about the public domain at our website.

If you did electrical construction work for the City of Baltimore in 1923, you could pick up a handy small reference book that would fit comfortably in your toolkit or tool-belt, because this petite volume with the cover title, “Rules and Regulations for the Construction of Electrical Work in the City of Baltimore, issued by the Inspector of Buildings,” is only 168 pages and just 6 inches by 4 inches. Issued as a paperback, this soft cover electrical code reader, complete with a 14 page “Index to Rules,” has everything you need to stay up to date with Baltimore city ordinances, especially building inspector requests and requirements.

The electrical engineer who uses this book is empowered to know and cite the rule or regulation regarding the installation of any type of motor, low or high power systems, wiring and switches for indoor and outdoor use, and of course, arc lamps popular in the home and in movie and theater houses all before the inspector of buildings comes to check out the finished project.