January 2 was Public Domain Day in 2023, celebrating the works that now belong to the ages (and you!). Public domain works may be copied from, remixed, incorporated into other works and generally utilized for free, without payment to rightsholders. They are viewed as part of the commons from which the world draws to make new art and knowledge. This often takes effect between 50 and 80 years after the death of the author (70 years in most countries). To find out whose work enters the public domain in 2023 in your country, Wikipedia has a useful chart.

Our blog post from last year details some implications for libraries – including greater opportunities for digitising material in collections and building our shared ‘knowledge commons’, as well as charts detailing the benefits of public domain to the social good, by making works accessible after their (often relatively short) commercial life wanes.

While the fate of most works is obscurity as they fall out of print, the public domain offers a chance for revitalised distribution. Nonetheless, many works remain influential. Many blogs have detailed all the works you’re now able to use, and we recommend looking at them. For some highlights (leaning heavily on film, where my greatest interest falls):

• Wings (1927), the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, which features aerial battle action and this impressive tracking shot in a café that occasionally makes the rounds on social media. Still on my to-watch list, and this will be a good excuse!
• The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, the last remaining collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories (written 1923-7) that was not already in the public domain. Speaking to the ridiculousness of holding onto copyright ownership for a character so diffused in the public imagination, in 2020 Doyle’s estate sued Netflix over a film adaptation on the logic that the character had not displayed empathy in earlier stories and therefore any story in which Holmes was not emotionally detached was still under copyright as an adaptation of the later stories. The suit was dismissed.
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), a beautiful silent era classic from Germany, which finished at #11 this November on Sight and Sound’s once-in-a-decade poll of the best films of all time.
• Metropolis (1927), one of the most influential science fiction films of all time and a personal favorite, a key focus point for imagery of mad scientists, cyborgs, and dystopic cities. Here’s a good two-part blog on the film from earlier this year, noting particularly that “Most science fiction builds the future on the foundation of the present — Metropolis is, if not unique, then close to it in extending that foundation into the distant past. Rotwang lives in a house ‘forgotten for centuries’ where he works with an unholy fusion of science and black magic: note the ever-present pentagrams and the alchemical device sitting in his wood stove. The climax takes place in a Gothic cathedral.”

Metropolis in particular is, in its own way, an argument for the value of the public domain, with its vision of a future built on ‘foundations in the past’, as well as its long history of indirect adaptation (while plenty of films were influenced by it, the city of Blade Runner often looks like a more detailed copy of Metropolis’ metropolis) and direct (a stage musical, Giorgio Moroder’s version with an alternate 80s soundtrack) and versions of multiple length for the film itself owing to scenes lost during edits made during its early international circulation. Key, plot-relevant scenes long thought lost were rediscovered in 2008 in the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires.

While the lost Metropolis scenes were considered a ‘Holy Grail’ level find of the silent era, the film was able to find influence without them. It still existed! An estimated total of just 25% of (American) films of the silent era remain in any known, accessible format at all (though some artists have made interesting attempts at resurrections, including imagining what those films might contain based solely on their titles). Films of the era weren’t preserved when their commercial lives were thought over. Clearly, a system relying on studios alone, which follow a market logic, to ensure the survival of these works has failed.

The above works have stood the test of time to be recognizable and influential today. They are now available to be shared, adapted, and further distributed more freely. They officially belong to a world that had long since claimed them. However, most works in the public domain are considerably more obscure. Who knows what gems are hiding now that they are liberated for further use?

We need institutions like libraries and archives to provide a guarantee of preservation of the works that shape our world – something that over-extended copyright adds to the difficulties of.

So as you enjoy the new possibilities that Public Domain Day brings to enjoy the works of the past, remember also all the hard work by libraries that and others that have helped them survive, and reflect on what we can do to ensure that we safeguard the films and other materials of today for the future.

Happy discovery in 2023!

A version of this post also appears on IFLA News.

This is a guest blog by Morten Olsen Haugen, Trøndelag County Library, Norway. 

09 August 2019; revised 09 September 2022

Since 2014, Trøndelag county library in Norway have been working together with the Saami community to create more children’s books in the south Saami language. With an approach adapted from library reading programmes, our aim is to publish a variety of translated books intended to meet the children’s own choice for entertainment reading.

Our catalogue of more than 140 books and audiobooks now includes works as Gruffalo, Kazuno Kohara’s Midnight library, Goldilocks, Jessica Love’s Julian is a mermaid, Disney’s Frozen 2, other princess tales, Beowulf, George R.R. Martin’s Ice Dragon, and books by Norwegian icons Alf Prøysen, Anne-Cath. Vestly and Thorbjørn Egner. Astrid Lindgren’s beloved Ronja and Emil are works in progress, as of fall of 2022.

Saami people in Scandinavia

Saami people are an indigenous people, living in northern Europe, in northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as the Kola Peninsula of Russia. It is considered the only indigenous people of Europe. Traditionally connected to a semi-nomadic reindeer husbandry, Saami people have also found other living, like fisheries for the coast communities. Today, the reindeer herding is still a core element in Saami society and identity, though fewer are connected to it themselves. For the last 200 years, The Saami people have experienced the same kind of setbacks as other indigenous people around the world; among which a government-initiated loss of own language. This has however changed in the last 40 years, and Nordic governments are now promoting use of Saami languages.

The Saami people are well integrated in Scandinavian societies, and they are fluent in their country’s majority languages. They are also well educated, proud of their heritage, and many young families are eager to regain their lost language.

There are eight different Saami languages, of which the three largest are used in schools and by the government in Norway and Sweden, Southern Saami being the smallest of these three. The estimated number of southern Saami native speakers vary between 600 and 2500. Compared to other Saami languages, Southern Saami have a special problem as the few speakers are living far apart from each other. Thus, there are few situations where speakers meet and can interact naturally in their “heart language”.

The core activities for the county libraries of Norway are to support and counsel the municipal public libraries and school libraries. They also provide infrastructure like inter library loans, mobile libraries, and some services for minority speakers. Running a small-scale publishing house together with Saami Language learning centres like Gïelem nastedh and Gïeleaernie is however quite unique for a county library.

Our approach – entertainment reading

The stereotypic indigenous children’s book has for many years been written by a native speaker – perhaps a teacher, with a content of traditional legends and manners, or if contemporary, with a narrative discussing how to maintain traditional virtues and identity in a changing world. The illustrator would also be native, perhaps an amateur related to the author.

We wanted to challenge this. Saami children are familiar with the contemporary popular culture. Like any other library, we wanted to offer them something cool and modern that they would read and reread by their own choice.

While we acknowledge the need to develop indigenous voices and literature, we could not sit and wait for these books to emerge. And we could certainly not settle with a Saami publishing policy that made these homemade books the main part of Saami children’s literature.

Luckily, it seems as if the trends in Saami literature politics have changed since 2014. Translated children’s books for entertainment reading are now a growing part of Saami publishing. Being modest, we would not suggest that we have initiated these changes by ourselves. Rather, we think that we came aboard at the right moment of winds of change, and at best we’ve contributed to strengthen a trend that was already overdue to happen.

Translations is also important because we need to publish a large quantity of Saami children’s books at a rapid pace. When we started, there were 2-3 new children’s books in southern Saami each year. We’ve published more than 10 books each year.

There is a wider language policy here too. We want to bring the Saami language outside the traditional areas of their users’ culture. Saami children should be able to use their heart language even when they read – and talk – about pets, football, pirates, princesses, ghosts, and monsters.

This project being about literary in an endangered language, we tend to use literature for many kinds of learning. Our advisory board keeps reminding us that the best effect for language revitalization comes when the texts can serve as examples that the children can use in their own spoken language: realistic vocabulary, syntax and dialogues that could be imitated every day. We are proud to have published The Ice Dragon, but there are few dialogues there that resemble the everyday kitchen table and playground interaction of the readers.

Shortage of translators

There are several stages in any publishing project. In our experience, neither of them is very complicated.

We’ve cooperated well with major publishing houses in Norway, Sweden, UK, and USA on publishing rights, even though we are a small customer to them. Kudos to them all for their polite hospitality. When we work with books already published in another language, most of the editorial and pre-print work is already done.

Our main problem is how to produce enough high quality translations. There aren’t enough translators. Hence, our concern is to make the best possible use of the translators available. Our translators and proof-readers are busy working with a multitude of aspects in southern Saami language and culture: Bible translation, developing schoolbooks and multimedia tools, teaching, researching, and implementing their language into several new fields of society, as well as teaching traditional crafts.

There are only a few educated translators, many missions to be completed, and several institutions in need of translators. As a result, an integrated element in our work is developing a new generation of translators among the young, educated Saami in their 20’s and 30’s.

Wider focus

Our work is generally well received in the Saami community. Both Saami politicians and parents give generous feedback. My favourite feedback is the young mother who was worried because she had lost count. “Now that there are new books all the time, I’m afraid I’d miss out some of them”. That’s indeed a luxury problem for a small language.

For the last two years, we have been developing a more diversified publishing policy. Though bright coloured picture books are funny to publish and a delight for the readers, we also need to serve the needs of older children and teens.

Books for readers aged 11-18 is our new priority, together with crossover literature that could be read with interest by both children, juveniles, and adults. Max Estes’ graphic novel Dulvie (Norwegian “Flommen”, i.e. “The flood”) is a good example of a book with a dual-audience-text well fitted for our purpose.

Second, as we evolve as one of the major publishers of Saami children’s literature, we also need to consider other aspects than entertainment reading and a high quantity of books. Books reflecting Saami culture will be more important to us in the future, given our position. Several of our new books are borrowed from other Saami languages, giving voice to contemporary Saami lives.

We’ve also started publishing books about indigenous experiences abroad. So far, we’ve looked to Canada, where ecology, politics, and livelihood among first nation people resembles those in Scandinavia.

Our third policy improvement is to move from printed text to spoken words. Saami children are living far apart from each other, not having many fellow Saami speakers around. For learning, leisure, and socialization there is a need for spoken language to be listened to.

We’ve published 18 audiobooks, but for the last year, we’ve switched to video books, such as this one. Video filming a reading person, combining it with images from the book, is a well-established genre in children’s television, and it seem to work well still. Especially for the combination of learning and entertainment.

Awards

Since I wrote the first edition of this essay in 2019, we have received several accolades. For 2019 we were awarded Library of the year in Norway. You might even want to enjoy the presentation video we made for that occasion.

We have been nominated to the ALMA – Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award three times, for 2020, 2021 and 2022. We are grateful for this nomination, and for the occasion to address Saami literacy and literature for new audiences.

Our work has also inspired a similar translation programme in the Lule Saami language society, initiated likewise by the library, municipality and the language learning centre serving this community. This is good news for Lule Saami children and families, and as they say – imitation is a certain compliment.

If you can read Scandinavian, or rely on the services of web translation programmes, you could also read about our work and philosophy in this 2021 essay.

Continue reading →

Each year on 10 December, Human Rights Day celebrates the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 74 years ago, as we are reminded that ongoing challenges to freedom of expression mean these rights must be continually defended. From challenges to library collections in regions around the world to geopolitical conflicts, the future of the human rights agenda is far from certain. In a recent interview, Suzanne Nossel from PEN America summed up why this is happening, and the implications, 

“at this point I think what we see is a really aggressive counter movement to rewrite the rules, to undercut the norms, to put forward an alternative vision of international order that doesn’t have human rights as an important precept. That alternative order has some appeal in some parts of the world because there is so much uncertainty about what it means to respect freedom of expression in the digital age.”

Libraries, librarians, and their collections have been a frequent target of repression in 2022, as they organised and adapted to address the challenges of the day 

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine displaced library staff and damaged libraries and collections. Librarians established efforts to save physical and digital cultural heritage, and adapted library buildings to serve as shelters;
• Amid the energy crisis in the UK, public libraries have scaled up “warm space” programs for citizens struggling to afford heating this coming Northern Hemisphere winter;
• Coordinated right-wing challenges in the US have resulted in librarians losing their jobs or resigning due to pressure to remove some material from collections. There have been collection challenges in multiple states. Some further examples are:
  • The defunding of a public library in Jamestown, Michigan
  • A librarian threatened with losing her job over a book display.
  • Funding has been threatened due to resistance to censorship.
• Trends toward ‘challenged’ or restricted collections that require special permission to access.
• “Global internet freedom [has] declined for the 12th consecutive year”, according to Freedom House’s Freedom of the Net Report 2022. Comparitech released visualizations of online censorship in 175 countries.
• Internet blocks and shutdowns affected freedom of information in Eswatini following 2021 protests In June, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report outlining the impacts of internet shutdowns across 74 countries that have been documented by the #KeepItOn campaign since 2016.

As we celebrate Human Rights Day this year librarians in many places, in different ways, find themselves on the frontlines of human rights, supporting communities seeking uncensored information and safe space. We acknowledge each one of them, and look forward to advancing Human Rights in the coming year

The FAIFE Human Rights Working Group

Fiona Bradley

Buhle Mbambo-Thata

Meg Brown-Sica

Matt Voigts

Recently, I was honored to deliver one of three keynote addresses at Nazarbayev University’s 11^th Eurasian Academic Libraries Conference (EALC) in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The conference theme was Open Access to Knowledge and Libraries: Achievements and Trends. Often in my work with IFLA I’m engaged with developing copyright policy, focusing on where things are going wrong and how they could be improved. Hearing speakers from around Central Asia enthusiastically and the world discuss OA, repository development, and other related ongoing projects, it felt like I had entered a space where OA and related policies were the norm and traditional publishing modes were the alternative. It clearly showed the vitality and utility of OA.

Many Central Asian universities represented at the conference were founded or expanded relatively recently – including conference host Nazarbyaev University, which was established 2010.  Open policies enable students and researchers to tap directly into the global, scholarly conversation in places that haven’t necessarily had decades to develop print collections, and journal subscriptions can be expensive and otherwise challenging to obtain. Access to current, up-to-date material enables everyone join and contribute to the global scholarly conversation.

There was a carefully chosen flow to the speakers, who were drawn from throughout the region and world. The conference featured simultaneous translation between Kazakh, Russian, and English – the three languages of Kazakhstan. The keynote addresses moved from my general discussion of the history of copyright. Broadly speaking, copyright law has always had a public interest goal in the diffusion of knowledge, and in the 20^th and 21^st centuries a lot of countries adopted or expanded rightsholder interests without paying adequate attention to the vital ‘limitations and exceptions’ that enable user access. In addition to my policy and advocacy role (email me at matt.voigts@ifla.org!), IFLA offers a variety of resources, including our recently-published, 576-page guide to copyright for libraries and statement in support of Open Access.

After my talk, the second keynote Paola Corti (SPARC Europe) discussed Open Access Policy and the third, Ray Uzwyshyn (Mississippi State University), discussed technical aspects of repository implementation. Ray is a standing committee member of IFLA’s Information Technology (IT) Section and editor of its Trends and Issues in Library Technology (TILT) bulletin (see recent issues from June and January 2022). Without meaning to leave out other conference speakers’ many contributions, I was particularly interested in hearing Zhyldyz Bekbalaeva (American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan) speak on the specifics of development of ‘open’ initiatives at her university library, and Celia Emmelhainz (the Smithsonian’s US National Anthropological Archives, and formerly of Nazarbayev University Library) talk on critical considerations in deciding which of their collections they should make widely available.

The conference marked my first visit to central Asia. Reading the city through my own anthropological background, I saw the (often material) construction of ideas about 21^st-century nationhood in development, reaching back to a vision of the past. While the southern city of Almaty is Kazakhstan’s ‘old capitol’, Astana (which changed its name from Nur-Sultan in September) as it is today largely developed since the country’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, moved the capitol there in 1997. Around 750,000 people were expected to call it home, while today 1.3 million people live there. Astana seems like a capitol city like many others, where people move for opportunity amid the attendant pressures of urban life. It is also the world’s second-coldest capital (after Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia), and marked by a sense of seeming full of people, vibrant and somewhat empty all at once.

The globally-recognized architects who designed Astana built a city in part futuristic, in part steeped in global art and culture signifiers – including an Italian-inspired opera house, where I was lucky enough to see a production of La Traviata with production design featuring a giant mirror that reflected the entirety of otherwise-obscured parts of the stage. Housing and business developments have names of global cities such as Budapest and sprawl over the ever-expanding edges of the city. Some buildings are all sleek glass. One displayed Blade Runner-style projections on the side. Distinct landmarks incorporate central Asian motifs and include the tent-like Khan Shatyr shopping center and Bayterek Tower, with a gold ball on top designed to evoke the nest of the mythic samruk bird.

This mix of the futuristic and historically-evocative elements extended to conferences. My hotel was coincidentally hosting a med-tech conference, complete with an astronaut-suited industry rep walking as if in zero gravity and a 9-am chamber quartet. I was likewise very excited to try regionally-characteristic foods, including besbarmaq and smoky horse yogurt.

Thanks for a wonderful conference – and I (and IFLA) plan to continue work with Central Asia’s libraries.