Wikipedia:Public domain resources

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. For other lists of resources, see below.

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. ^* Please make certain that in any particular jurisdiction government agencies will allow you to copy materials without permission.

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.

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.

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 , it expands into:

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: CIA WFB 2000, e.g. Whatlinkshere/Template:CIA WFB 2000.

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

Encyclopedic or general resources

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

Canadian Government

While the Canadian government claims Crown copyright there are images archives at the National Library of Canada that are in the public domain. They include:
- Early Images of Canada 550 images
- Canadian Illustrated News 4000 half-tone images from 1869-1883

Dictionaries

Hypertext Webster Gateway A searchable interface to a 1913 public-domain Webster's dictionary, downloadable here: Public Domain Dictionary
Another searchable interface with the 1913 Webster's.

Other

Public Domain Comedy Heaven A growing collection of free to download public domain video comedy. Including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton.
Public Domain Books: Online Visitors to this website can read and download 13,000+ Public Domain books, all for free.
Project Gutenberg See in particular The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia (although only Vol 1 of this seems to be available). Note that not all of the Project Gutenberg texts are fully in the public domain. Read the license of the respective texts carefully. "The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia is a reproduction of a 1911 edition of a famous encyclopedia."
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.
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908)
The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906)

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.

Web sites that contain collections that are copyright free - a lot of duplication here but some may be new.

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).

University of Florida public domain materials..

Philosophy, mathematics and natural science

Public domain databases of interests to scientists
List of Scientific and Technology databases many of which are in the public domain.

Astronomy and astrophysics

(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

(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
- A Science Primer. Background material on cell biology, bioinformatics and more. (Please use the following msg on the relevant Talk or image description page if you use material from this work: NCBI-scienceprimer.)
- The NCBI Handbook. More background on genomics and bioinformatics relevant to the NCBI itself. (Please use the following msg on the relevant Talk or image description page if you use material from this work: NCBI-handbook.)

Chemistry

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

ChemIDplus at http://chem.sis.nlm.nih.gov/chemidplus/ appears to be a public domain database of about 200,000 chemicals -- needs checking, though.

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.

NIST Chemistry WebBook at http://webbook.nist.gov/

NIST Atomic Spectra Database at http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/AtData/main_asd

Periodic Tables of the Elements in Over One Hundred Languages with a lot of minorized languages.

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

Mathematics

Biographies of mathematicians - from a 1908 history of mathematics. See the discussion at Rouse History of Mathematics

10 British Mathematicans in PDF / 10 British Mathematicans in TeX Ten British Mathematicans of the Nineteenth Century, by Alexander Macfarlane, published 1916. (Alexander Macfarlane died in 1913.)

Philosophy

http://www.philosophypages.com

http://www..iep.utm.edu

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

Statistics

Social sciences

Anthropology

Archaeology

Biography

(U.S. Federal Government) Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774 to present ()

Note: the images on bioguide may or may not be PD. Their copyright notice is at ^*.

Economics

Geography and maps

(US Federal Govt.) U.S. Census Bureau Has an enormous range of facts and figures which are useful when fleshing out articles about cities and states
(US Federal Govt.) Summary Demographic Data by Country from the US Census Bureau

(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.) ^* - 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)
(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 NIMA www.nima.mil GEOnet Names Server contains approximately 3.88 million named geographical features outside the United States, with 5.34 million names ^*
(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
^* USGS National Map Viewer, configurable. includes topos.

History

(US Federal Govt.) United States National Archives and Records Administration, the U.S. federal government's official archive site
Historical Maps of the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas (public domain usage statement - "Courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin")
(US Federal Govt.) Biographical Directory of the United States Congress - biographical information on everyone who ever served in Congress, including a good number of presidents. Articles that use info from this source should use at the bottom, for a simple citation.

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)

History of science and technology

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

Applied arts and sciences

Agriculture

Architecture

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.

New York State Education Departments website "Unless specifically stated otherwise, all information on the New York State Education Department's (NYSED's) website at http://www.nysed.gov is in the public domain,..."

Employment

(US Federal Govt.) Occupational Outlook Handbook Contains descriptions of a great many occupations such as Physical Therapist

Energy

Library of public domain images of operational Solar Power projects

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/ ).

Engineering

Publications of the Headquarters, United States Army Corps of Engineers

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

US Bureau of Reclemation publications, manuals on small dam design, water flow measurement, turbine calculations, etc...

Law

Bouvier's Law Dictionary (1856)

Medicine

(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.) U.S. National Toxicology Program: copyright notice here, typical U.S. govt 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 U.S. govt. 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

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) ^*, launch site information, space launch company information, environmentl and technical information on launch sites.

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.

Transport

Porting Vectorsite articles

Culture

UNESCO Public Domain Resources and Virtual Library

Arts and Entertainment

Classics

Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898) can be found via http://www.art.man.ac.uk/clah/links/searchency.htm

Cooking

Libraries

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

Literature

Project Gutenberg - free public domain etexts
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
LibriVox - free public domain audio books

Music

Internet Archive: Open Source Audio (most under licenses but some in the public domain)
The Choral Public Domain Library describes itself as 'A Free Sheet Music Archive'
Mutopia: a collection of public domain sheet music
Project Gutenberg music section
MusicBrainz: a database of structured metadata about audio releases

Recreation

Will Hay.Comic Genius: an uncopyrighted site about Will Hay

Religion

Christianity

Biblical dictionaries: Some late nineteenth century Biblical dictionaries; these might need work to render unbiased and up-to-date.
- A number of articles already contain most of the useful text from Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
- Hitchcock's Bible Dictionary's list of Biblical names has been used as a source for the List of Biblical names
- Smith's Bible Dictionary is another 19th century Bible dictionary, with much useful but dated text
Public Domain Biblical references
Christian Classics Ethereal Library: A project similar to Project Gutenberg, but focusing on Christian texts
Bibles for the World: A Bible study resource with many translations and versions of the Bible
The Tertullian Project: A collection of material ancient and modern about the ancient Christian Latin writer Tertullian and his writings
World English Bible: A modern English, public-domain Bible, still being edited
American Standard Version of the Holy Bible (1901)
King James Version of the Holy Bible with Apocrypha
28 versions/languages of the Bible and growing
public domain bibles and dictionaries

Judaism

The Jewish Encyclopedia

Occultism

Lewis Spence's An Encyclopaedia of Occultism is an extensive work on occultism which should be in the public domain in the U.S.

Sports

Photos

Please see Public domain image resources

Miscellaneous

Writings by Greg Goebel: 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 Eloquence 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."

To be filed

please file these resources under the appropriate topic headings above

There are no more entries to be filed at the moment

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.

This Google search for '"not copyrighted" site:.gov' finds documents on websites in the .gov domain that contain the text "not copyrighted"
This Google search for '"public domain" site:.gov' finds documents on websites in the .gov domain that contain the text "public domain"

Google searches for links or exact phrases:

"this document is in the public domain" (estimated 2500+ hits)
"this page is in the public domain" (estimated 1000+ hits)
"this information is in the public domain" (estimated 1000+ hits)
"this text is in the public domain" (estimated 2000+ hits)
"placed in the public domain" (estimated 24000+ hits, but many instances refer to other things)
"www.ethicalpublicdomain.org" (find links confirming that a site is Public Domain)
Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication

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)

Lists of general resources

Public Domain Images. Scans of engravings and other artwork from a personal collection of old books, magazines, and post cards. Updated regularly.
A free library of Public Domain Books.
Registry for material that is in the public domain "except as noted" maintained by the Open Leader network
Unmaintained list of public domain resources by Kevin Savetz
Banis Associates list of public domain resources
Public Domain Music website
Brian Waters' list of public domain resources
New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors tracking old books and author's dates for determining copyright expiration

Lists of U.S. Government resources

Wikipedia copyright | Wikipedia sources

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