Author Archives: Chris Freeland

About Chris Freeland

Chris Freeland is the Director of Library Services at Internet Archive.

2026 Public Domain Film Remix Contest: The Internet Archive is Looking For Creative Short Films Made By You!

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Poster for the Internet Archive’s 2026 Public Domain Film Remix Contest, featuring the “Lockette,” a cartoon character with an open lock, seated in a director’s chair, legs crossed, and holding a megaphone. Projected on a screen to her right is a frame from the 1930 film “King of Jazz”. Illustrated by Freya Morgan.

We invite filmmakers, artists, and creatives of all skill levels and backgrounds to celebrate Public Domain Day, by creating and uploading a 2-3 minute short film to the Internet Archive.

This contest offers a chance to explore and reimagine the creative treasures entering the public domain, especially works from 1930 that will enter the public domain on January 1—classic literature, early sound films, cartoons, music, and art. Participants are encouraged to use materials from the Internet Archive’s collections to craft unique films that breathe new life into these cultural gems.

Top entries will be awarded prizes up to $1,500, with winners announced during our virtual and in-person Public Domain Day Celebrations on January 21, 2026. All submissions will be featured in a special Public Domain Day Collection on archive.org and highlighted in a January 2026 blog post.

Join us in this creative celebration of cultural heritage and timeless art!

Guidelines

  • Make a 2–3 minute movie using at least one work published in 1930 that will become Public Domain on January 1, 2026. This could be a poem, book, film, musical composition, painting, photograph or any other work that will become Public Domain next year. The more different PD materials you use, the better!
    • Note: If you have a resource from 1930 that is not available on archive.org, you may upload it and then use it in your submission. (Here is how to do that). 
  • Your submission must have a soundtrack. It can be your own voiceover or performance of a public domain musical composition, or you may use public domain or CC0 sound recordings from sources like Openverse and the Free Music Archive.
    • Note: Sound recordings have special status under Copyright Law, so it’s important to note that while musical compositions from 1930 will be entering the public domain, the sound recordings of those works are not. Sound recordings published in 1925 will enter the public domain. 
  • Mix and Mash content however you like, but note that ALL of your sources must be from the public domain. They do not all have to be from 1930. Remember, U.S. government works are public domain no matter when they are published. So feel free to use those NASA images! You may include your own original work if you put a CC0 license on it.
  • We are celebrating the public domain as a triumph of human creativity, and we want your submission to reflect that spirit. The contest honors the imagination, craft, and originality that people bring to remixing culture, so your final film should be a human-made work of art. If you use AI tools in your submission, please explain how they are used.
  • Add a personal touch, make it yours!
  • Keep the videos light hearted and fun! (It is a celebration after all!)

Submission Deadline

All submissions must be in by 11:59pm PST, January 7, 2026.

How to Submit

  1. Create an Internet Archive account.
  2. Upload your film to archive.org.
    • Add a subject tag field of “remix contest 2026” in the upload form.
    • Link all your sourced materials from 1930 or prior in the upload description.
    • Copy the URL/link to your submission, you will need it for the submission form.
  3. Complete the online Submission Form.

To help get you started here are some materials that will become part of the public domain on January 1, 2026.

  • Books: The first four original editions of the Nancy Drew books, including The Secret of the Old Clock. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Dick and Jane made their first appearance in the Elson Basic Readers. The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper choo-chooed onto the scene.
  • Comics: The iconic Blondie by Chic Young first debuted in 1930. Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in comics in 1930 featuring multiple serialized storylines! Even more Popeye stories including those featuring the Sea Hag!
  • Films: The King of Jazz, a two-strip Technicolor musical revue featuring Bing Crosby, elaborate sets, and Vaudevillian routines. Morocco, a melodrama featuring Marlene Dietriech pushing the boundaries of pre-Hays Code Hollywood. All Quiet on the Western Front, the Best Picture winning adaptation of the novel. Dizzy Dishes, the first appearance of Betty Boop in film. The Picnic, a Disney short featuring the debut of Rover, the dog that would become Pluto a year later.
  • Musical Compositions: It Happened in Monterey, a song of longing for romance past. But Not for Me, a lament about love songs. Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight, a carefree celebration. Dream A Little Dream of Me, a wishful request of longing. Beyond the Blue Horizon, a song that invokes our own blinking servers that made 1 trillion webpages possible. Georgia on My Mind, a song that became the official state song of Georgia in 1979. You can record your own versions of any of these compositions and reuse them in your film.
  • Sound Recordings (1925): A Cup Of Coffee, A Sandwich & You, a fox trot rendition by the Carleton Terrace Orchestra. St. Louis Blues by Bessie Smith ft. Louis Armstrong on the cornet. I’ll See You in My Dreams by the Isham Jones Orchestra, the top selling record of 1925. Manhattan by Ben Selvin Orchestra as The Knickerbockers, a jazzy evocation of the city.

Prizes

  • 1st prize: $1500
  • 2nd prize: $1000
  • 3rd prize: $500

Judges will be looking for videos that are fun, interesting and use public domain materials, especially those from 1930. Submissions should highlight the value of having cultural materials that can be reused, remixed, and re-contextualized for a new day. Winners will be announced and previewed at our virtual event, then shown on the “big screen” and celebrated in person at the in-person Public Domain Day party in San Francisco. Winners’ pieces will be purchased with the prize money, and viewable on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons license.

Past Winning Submission Examples

  • The Situationship
    • A thoughtful edit that condenses a whole film down to short film length while also updating its context for the present day with a Sapphic love story.
  • When I Leave the World Behind
    • Queline Meadows’s inspired mix of movies, images, music and text woven into a subtle and emotionally affecting video expressing a strong sense of nostalgia and the irretrievable passage of time.
  • Just Like A Hollywood Star
    • A rich montage of sound and picture, focusing on images that model beauty, fitness, posture, proper behavior, and the laws of physics to produce an unpredictable result.
  • 1928 Playable Demo
    • An inventive creation positioning old film as a video game invoking feelings of interactivity.
  • This Is The Science Of Optics
    • A collage of sight and sound with experimental elements bending the visuals and leaving the audience with pontifications about existence.
  • Danse des Aliénés
    • This trippy piece creates a visual experience unlike others with animation, bold colors, and unique framing to draw the viewer in and invoke experimental filmmaking of later decades with older materials.

For further reference, check out past entrants from 2025.

Boston Library Consortium Joins Statement Supporting Digital Rights for Memory Institutions

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The movement for Our Future Memory is getting bigger, with yet another library leader endorsing memory institutions’ digital rights.

The Boston Library Consortium (BLC), comprised of twenty-six research libraries in the New England area, has signed the Statement on Four Digital Rights for Memory Institutions Online. BLC joins more than forty other signatories from around the world, from the Wikimedia Foundation to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). Alongside two other recent signatories, it adds a strong voice to the growing list of libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations that are calling for stronger legal protections to fulfill their public missions in the digital age. 

“BLC is proud to join institutions worldwide in defending our rights to collect, preserve, provide access, and cooperate. Libraries safeguard cultural memory—and online content shouldn’t be an exception.”

Charlie Barlow, executive director, Boston Library Consortium

“BLC is proud to join institutions worldwide in defending our rights to collect, preserve, provide access, and cooperate,” said executive director Charlie Barlow. “Libraries safeguard cultural memory—and online content shouldn’t be an exception.”

In putting its name to the statement, BLC offers further proof that libraries and archives know exactly what they need to keep preserving and providing access to the culture record.

Want to learn more?

Voices Celebrating 1 Trillion Web Pages: Erin Malone on Designing Kodak’s First Web Site in 1994

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Erin Malone, the user experience designer behind Kodak’s first website, looks back on the early web with the story of how she and a colleague built the company’s inaugural homepage in 1994, before most of marketing even knew what the web was.

Fresh out of grad school and self-taught in HTML (as everyone was at that time), Malone helped create a pioneering site that today lives on in the Wayback Machine. Her testimonial highlights just how radical those early experiments were, and why preserving them matters.

“Another person in the design group that I worked in…suggested, ‘Why don’t we build a website for Kodak?’ And since I had done a website, I was like, sure, let’s do it. 

And we asked our boss if that was OK. And he said, ‘Yes,’ because I don’t think he really knew what we were talking about.”

Erin Malone, interaction designer
When I got out of grad school, I started working at Kodak. And in 1994, Mosaic came out. I had just taught myself HTML and another person in the design group that I worked in, his name was Frank Marino, suggested, “Why don't we build a website for Kodak?” 

And since I had done a website, I was like, sure, let's do it. 

And we asked our boss if that was OK. And he said, yes, because I don't think he really knew what we were talking about. And, you know, marketing wasn't really into the web yet. And they didn't have any objections. 

So we built a website that was essentially a big image map with four images coming out of the center. And I think each one linked to, I don't know, a white paper or a page with just some text on it. 

We built that in, I think,'94. I think what the Wayback Machine has is dated from 1996, but it's the same image, the same homepage. And it was pretty radical at the time.

Meet Merrilee Proffitt, Director of Democracy’s Library US

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Merrilee Proffitt

Democracies depend on an informed and engaged citizenry — and in the digital age, that means equitable, reliable access to public information online. To help make this vision a reality, the Internet Archive is building Democracy’s Library, a free, open, online collection of government research and publications from around the world.

To bolster the U.S. component of this effort, the Internet Archive welcomes Merrilee Proffitt as the director of Democracy’s Library, US. Merrilee brings decades of experience in library collaboration, digital initiatives, and open knowledge partnerships that will help shape and scale this growing national collection.

Building an open, digital public resource

As director, Merrilee will guide the expansion of Democracy’s Library in the United States—working with libraries, archives, and civic institutions to make publicly funded information freely available and discoverable online. This work continues the Internet Archive’s long-standing commitment to universal access to knowledge, while supporting democratic engagement through transparency, accountability, and shared understanding.

“Governments have produced an extraordinary wealth of information in the public domain,” said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. “Democracy’s Library helps ensure that this knowledge truly serves the public good.” 

A career dedicated to collaboration and access

Before joining the Internet Archive, Merrilee served as senior manager of the OCLC Research Library Partnership, supporting collaboration among leading research libraries worldwide. She previously worked with the Research Libraries Group and at the University of California, Berkeley, where she managed digital library initiatives that brought rare and unique materials from the Bancroft Library and other collections online.

Throughout her career, Merrilee has been a strong advocate for connecting libraries and archives with the global open knowledge ecosystem. She has deep experience partnering with the Wikimedia community to make library collections more visible and reusable across the web. Drawing on experience advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries and archives, she is committed to building a Democracy’s Library that reflects the diversity of the communities it serves and the many perspectives that strengthen democratic engagement.

When she’s not collaborating to open access to knowledge, Merrilee enjoys cycling (including riding her bike to the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco), and baking sourdough bread.

Learn more:

Voices Celebrating 1 Trillion Web Pages: Jean Armour Polly, Net-Mom

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Jean Armour Polly—better known as the Net-mom, and the person who helped popularize the phrase “surfing the internet” in 1994—adds her voice to the celebration of the Internet Archive’s 1 trillionth webpage preserved.

In her message, Polly reflects on the ephemerality of the web—how sites appear, vanish, change, or are censored—and why the Archive’s ability to reveal these shifts is essential to understanding not just events, but who was speaking, who wasn’t, and whose voices history might otherwise forget. Drawing on her own work digitizing fragile Civil War pension files, she compares the care of digital preservation to rescuing stories from dusty barns and bringing them back to life. Polly honors not only creators, but also the librarians and archivists who ensure that our cultural record endures.

“Without [Internet Archive], we risk not only losing the websites themselves, but the story of how society and culture has been shaped by them.”

Jean Armour Polly, Net-Mom
Hi, I'm Jean Armour Polly, also known as the Net-mom. 

It's because in the early days of the internet, I helped a lot of people take their first baby steps on it. But I'm here today to help congratulate and celebrate the Internet Archive's 1000000000000th webpage archived. 

That's just an amazing number. Wow. Because websites are ephemeral. They come up, they go down, links are added, links are deleted. Sometimes they're even censored. The archive reveals all these changes though, and that's important. 

It's important for us to not only see how events were covered, but who was talking about them, what they were saying, and sometimes it's even as important or maybe more important about who wasn't talking and whose voices weren't heard. 

The archive might even become the Rosetta Stone for future digital archeologists trying to decipher the hieroglyphs of emojis or inscrutable memes. 

I have some experience with digitization myself. In recent months, I've been a volunteer at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's Digitize New York project. Here where I live. We've been scanning and digitizing a huge cache of Civil War pension documents that had formally been in a lawyer's office, but since 1930, they've been stored in Campbell's soup boxes in a dusty old hay barn. 

When I scan something, I think of the soldier and the story that I'm helping to preserve, because it wasn't just about grievous war wounds or diseases he had picked up, but also about his family history, about camp life, about troop movements and battles, things you just can't find in a history book. 

And I think about his family, I think about him when I scan these documents, but I also think about who had the forethought to save this stuff, and not just toss it or shred it or burn it, but to keep it in hopes that some day somebody would come along and rescue it, digitize it, so the stories would live. 

And that's what the Internet Archive has done and will do. It's so important. Without it, we risk not only losing the websites themselves, but the story of how society and culture has been shaped by them. 

So many kudos to the content creators, but also don't forget the critical work of the librarians and the archivists who have preserved them. 

Save our stories, protect the past, and help shape our future. 

Congratulations.

Voices Celebrating 1 Trillion Pages: Katherine Maher, President and CEO of NPR

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Katherine Maher, President and CEO of NPR, honors the Internet Archive’s milestone of 1 trillion web pages preserved as “1 trillion artifacts and snapshots of our interconnected world.” In her message, Maher celebrates the Archive’s role in protecting the integrity of the open web—keeping news, public discourse, and our shared stories freely accessible to all. She draws parallels between NPR and the Internet Archive, highlighting their shared commitment to access to information, public service, and strengthening societies through knowledge and dialogue. As Maher notes, in an era when information “emerges suddenly, decays rapidly, and disappears instantly,” the Archive’s preservation work is more critical than ever.

“At NPR, we share many common values with the Internet Archive, a deep commitment to access to information, a dedication to public service, and a belief in strengthening societies.”

Katherine Maher, President and CEO of NPR
Hello everyone. I'm Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR. It's an honor to join you today in celebrating a truly historic accomplishment and one close to my heart.

Congratulations to the Internet Archive and everyone who contributed to this milestone of 1 trillion webpages. That's 1 trillion artifacts and snapshots of our interconnected world. It's a testament to the Internet Archive's unwavering commitment to safeguarding the integrity of the open web and its history, ensuring that this vast digital record remains free and open for everyone. 

At NPR, we share many common values with the Internet Archive, a deep commitment to access to information, a dedication to public service, and a belief in strengthening societies. Through information and dialogue we live today, in an era in which information is unstable, it emerges suddenly decays, rapidly, disappears instantly. It's increasingly difficult for anyone to build stability on this volatility, whether you're an independent learner or society seeking common ground.

So in this moment, the Archive's role in preserving news, public discourse and our shared stories is more critical than ever. The internet is today's living historical record, a cultural mirror reflecting our society, who we are, where we come from, what we perceive matters, how we connect, and how we make sense of ideas, events, and one another. 

By preserving this record, the Archive helps us remain grounded in what we know and what we think we believe and accountable to how we change and evolve over time. It supports vital research and allows us to understand current events within a broader context. This preservation counters the challenge of disappearing news and loss, meaning online. It provides us an enduring resource for journalists, scholars, and the public alike. It protects our shared stories and it strengthens our civic dialogue. 

So let's all celebrate this incredible milestone together. The Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine are trusted, vital resources, and we at NPR are proud to stand with you in this important work. Thank you. Please keep it up. Keep on keeping on.

Voices Celebrating 1 Trillion Pages: Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer

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Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, recognizes the Internet Archive’s achievement of preserving 1 trillion web pages as an essential act of cultural memory. In his message, Cerf emphasizes that without the Archive’s work, “the 22nd century will have no clue what the 21st century was all about.” He offers deep gratitude to founder Brewster Kahle and the Archive’s “amazing crew of talented engineers” for ensuring that the story of our digital age endures.

In the absence of what [Internet Archive has] done, the 22nd century will have no clue what the 21st century was all about.

Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer
Hello. My name is Vint Cerf and I'm Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, and I've just learned about the incredible milestone of the Internet Archive: 1 trillion webpages. 

It has preserved an enormous amount of history over the course of their data collection, something which I feel is absolutely essential. In the absence of what they have done, the 22nd century will have no clue what the 21st century was all about. 

And so we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for having created and executed on this collection. And Brewster Kale, of course, being the founder, deserves enormous credit for that, as does his amazing crew of talented engineers. So congratulations on reaching that milestone. Keep at it. There's more coming.

Looking Back on Our Shared Digital History: “The Web We’ve Built” Mini-Doc

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To help people connect with the Internet Archive’s celebration of 1 trillion web pages preserved, we created “The Web We’ve Built,” a cinematic reflection on how humanity came together to build, shape, and now safeguard the web. From the crackle of a dial-up modem to the galaxy of pages preserved in the Wayback Machine, the film traces our shared journey online—the creativity, connection, challenges, and triumph of building the largest digital library in history, together.

Credits:
Written by Chris Freeland
Animated and Edited by Freya Morgan
Research support by Sterling Dudley

Voices Celebrating 1 Trillion Pages: Peter Gabriel, Musician

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Musician Peter Gabriel reflects on the Internet Archive preserving 1 trillion web pages—a milestone he calls “an extraordinary achievement.” In his message, Gabriel celebrates the Archive’s role in safeguarding humanity’s collective memory and offers congratulations to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, recipient of this year’s Internet Archive Hero Award.

“Humanity is not going to forget…”

Peter Gabriel, musician
Hi, this is Peter Gabriel in London.

What you've achieved with the Internet Archive is a means of recording so many of our memories, now 1 trillion web pages. And so humanity is not going to forget and lose memory and lose themselves in the way that we might've done had you not been there.

It's an extraordinary achievement, and congratulations also to the
internet hero, Tim Berners-Lee. Have a brilliant night.Thank you so much for what you do.