Happy New Year! This new year is important because many many copyrighted works are entering the public domain. Copyrighted works published in 1923 are entering the public domain today. That’s hundreds of thousands of images, sounds, novels, short stories, and poems! It has been twenty years since the last big batch of works has entered the public domain. Smithsonian magazine has a great article that explains why 1998 was the last time there was a mass expiration of copyright. The short version is “blame Disney.”

On the topic of public domain, I recently published this guide to finding and using media in classroom projects.