Three of North America’s flagship library organizations have thrown their weight behind the movement to protect memory institutions’ digital rights.
The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) just joined the Statement on Four Digital Rights for Memory Institutions Online. Together, they represent thousands of public and academic research libraries, as well as three of Canada’s federal and parliamentary libraries. Now, they stand with Our Future Memory’s global coalition of libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations expressing the urgent need to protect memory institutions’ vital role in the digital age.
In endorsing the Statement, Katherine McColgan, manager of administration and programs for CARL, explained that “[t]he current digital landscape is significantly affecting the knowledge economy in two ways. One is that online materials are on platforms that restrict the collection, preservation, and making available materials for future générations. The second is that, without the ability to digitize and make available important scholarly works online, information is lost to new generations of scholars. It is imperative that memory institutions are able to continue their work in the digital environment in the same way as with print.”
Indeed, the Statement demands nothing new—only the basic rights necessary for libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organizations to continue their core operations and fulfill their public-serving mission. The Statement calls on policymakers around to world to ensure that memory institutions have the right and ability to:
Collect digital materials
Preserve digital collections
Provide controlled digital access
Cooperate across institutions
Building on well over a decade of advocacy by leaders in the library community, “[t]he statement’s principles provide policymakers with a clear roadmap for how to maintain the essential public role of libraries, archives, and museums in the digital age,” said Lisa Varga, associate executive director of ALA’s Public Policy and Advocacy Office.
It “underscores the importance of protecting libraries’ rights through legislative advocacy and licensing strategies, in an era of increasingly restrictive licensing agreements that threaten essential library functions like building collections, preserving materials, and enabling advanced computational research methods such as AI,” explained ARL’s director of public policy, Katherine Klosek.
With these new signatories, the global call to protect the rights of memory institutions online gains even further momentum.
Ready to Join?
Your organization can join the movement and sign the Statement by going to the Our Future Memory website.
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 entered 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. Browse newly opened public domain materials.
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!
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.
To help get you started here are some materials that will become part of the public domain on January 1, 2026.See examples.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the early days of the HIV-AIDS crisis, journalist John-Manuel Andriote was struck by how the gay and lesbian community mobilized, and how many in the general public responded with an outpouring of volunteerism and support.
He wrote about this pivotal time in his book, Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1999 and updated in 2011.
“The LGBT community was organizing to save their lives and allies supported and joined them,” said Andriote, a journalist and author based in Atlanta. “This community-level organizing literally built the LGBT equality movement.”
Recognizing the relevance of lessons learned from this unique period in history to readers today, Andriote decided to make the book available to all. Twenty-six years after its release, Victory Deferred is now an open access book—free to anyone as a digital download.
“AIDS taught us about our own power to create change, to stand up for ourselves, and not only demand change, but to bring that change about,” said Andriote, 67, who is gay and has been living with HIV since his 2005 diagnosis. “We learned how to do it under duress. Those are really important things to know—about an individual’s ability to accomplish things on our community’s behalf.”
By making the book open access, Andriote said he hopes to keep alive the stories of the early activists and build awareness about the ongoing challenges for equal rights.
“There’s no other book that is a journalistic history drawing from hundreds of first-hand, original interviews with people on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic,” he said. “It makes the connection between the community organizing and the national political movement.”
The book won a Lambda Literary Award (Editors’ Choice Award), and was a finalist for the American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards and the New York Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction.
Recognizing the historical importance of Andriote’s work, the Smithsonian Institution has preserved his research as part of the nation’s record. In 2008, the National Museum of American History, in Washington, D.C., archived his notes and recordings for the book, as well as all correspondence between Andriote and his editor at The University of Chicago Press. All of his work products are available for scholars and researchers to review. The crisis prompted many people to be public about their sexuality and become politically active, Andriote said, and preservation of those stories is important.
“Our stories are fully equal pieces of American history.”
John-Manuel Andriote, author of Victory Deferred
“The reason I started writing about AIDS grew very much out of my personal sense of full equality,” he said. “Writing about gay men and how it’s affecting my community grew out of my sense that our stories are human stories. Our stories are fully equal pieces of American history. They are part of what makes up this country—and the fact that the Smithsonian recognized this just felt great.”
Andriote was introduced to the idea of open access publishing through an editor at University of Massachusetts Press. He had secured the copyright for Victory Deferred in 2008. He formatted the book for open access publication and worked with the University of Chicago Library to publicize it, and with the Internet Archive to host the open access version.
Andriote is also the author of “Stonewall Strong: Gay Men’s Heroic Fight for Resilience, Good Health, and a Strong Community” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
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.
From CNN: The Internet Archive has been saving web history for nearly 30 years. CNN’s Hadas Gold goes inside its headquarters to see how the archive is innovating for the AI age and protecting itself from both political and physical threats.
Map of Oz; John R. Neill – Tik-Tok of Oz, first published in the United States in 1914.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the American fairy tale. Like other fairy tales that resonate across time and cultures, this story has seen retellings time and again that morph, recontextualize, and expand the story. This phenomena continues with the second half of the Wicked film duology releasing this November with Wicked: For Good. Let’s explore some of the stories and lore of this American fairy tale that now live in the public domain. All these different stories crafted the lore and world of Oz in the imaginations of audiences around the world.
Books and Literature
Cover to the original 1900 Oz novel
Oz originates in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900. Its basic plot is well known: Dorothy of Kansas is swept away to Oz via cyclone. There she meets an exotic cast of characters including the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. Along her journey she faces many challenges in an episodic style as she seeks to return home with the Wizard’s help.
Many fans might believe the Wicked Witch is the novel’s central antagonist, but in fact she appears in just one chapter in the original text. Her larger role in the plot is an association with the 1939 film, an interpretation that became highly influential, as nearly every later Oz story riffs on this idea, including Wicked. Baum would not reuse the Wicked Witch in later novels.
Beyond this original tale are numerous other novels, including another 13 by Baum and 19 by his immediate successor, Ruth Plumly Thompson. Of these 32 tales, 23 were published by the end of 1929 and are in the public domain, including all of Baum’s output. On January 1, 2026, another Plumly Thompson novel, The Yellow Knight of Oz, will join that group. Plumly Thompson’s output ultimately surpassed Baum’s, though her imaginative contributions, including introducing a new main focal character—Peter Brown—remain underappreciated today.
Cover to the first sequel Oz novel
Among Baum’s sequels, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), his first sequel, stands out for introducing Princess Ozma and expanding the mythology of Oz. It is the only one of Baum’s works to not feature Dorothy as a character in the story. Due to popular demand, she would return in Ozma of Oz (1907). In this tale she would be referred to as Dorothy Gale for the first time in the novels, although the name originated in the 1902 musical revue.
Check out all of the Oz books in the public domain in our collections!
Musicals and Sound Recordings
Promotional image for the 1902 musical
Part of Baum’s core campaign in expanding Oz’s reach was his ability to spread it into multi-media. In 1902, he penned the book for a musical revue that differed from his original text and introduced many more characters, including Imogen the Cow. Notable among the work are the plethora of songs created for it that were cycled in and out as the production shifted locations.
By 1913, Baum had penned another two successful stage productions: The Woggle-Bug (1905), and The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1913). This latter work exhibits Baum’s multi-media synergy as the play was based on prior Oz novels, Ozma of Oz (1907) and The Road to Oz (1909). He then adapted this musical into his 1914 book, Tik-Tok of Oz.
A selection of items related to the Oz musicals
While these original Oz musical productions are unable to be viewed now, due to the impermanent nature of theatre, we can still connect to them through sound recordings. While not recordings of the actual shows, these auditory oddities act as gateways to the past. They unlock a direct link to tangible creative expression that also reflects the artistic and performing sensibilities of the time. Surviving from the time is a 1913 recording from The Tik-Tok Man of Oz: My Wonderful Dream Girl.
Explore the many elements of these productions, including sheet music, visual imagery, and sound recordings in our collections.
Film
Rightly remembered for its masterful execution and translation of the fairytale Oz to the big screen, MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939) remains the primary association with Oz for most audiences. However, despite its iconic status, that version was preceded by multiple filmed adaptations. Between 1908 and 1925, at least six silent adaptations brought Oz to life, some now lost, others surviving in fragments that reveal inventive visual interpretations often drawn from the stage musicals of the era.
The first—in 1910—acts as a loose adaptation of the stage musical featuring Imogen the cow. In 1914, under Baum’s own supervision, His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz stands out for recycling narrative elements and characters that Baum later reshaped into his book The Scarecrow of Oz. A 1925 film, The Wizard of Oz, went feature-length with slapstick sensibility and large deviations from the source material. It was directed by and starred Larry Semon and featured Oliver Hardy in a pre-Laurel and Hardy role as the Tin Man.
Title card of the 1933 cartoon
Deviation from the source material was common into the 1930s with a 1933 short cartoon aptly titled The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Ted Eshbaugh, this cartoon is the first instance of an Oz film in sound and color. Building on the adaptation oddities, this film includes no dialogue, sans a simple song refrain, and it trades out a plot for lively 1930s animation and fantastical moments that fit into the inventive world of Oz. The short features an element inspired by the first book by having Kansas be monochromatic before Oz radiates with color. This shift in color would again be utilized in the 1939 Oz film. Oddly, the short does not end with Dorothy returning to Kansas, similarly to the end of the 1902 musical. Rather it ends on an inconclusive button with a giant egg hatching a tiny chicken for comedic effect. A charming oddity, it shows just how wildly Oz’s world could be reinterpreted even then. Learn more about its history and restoration process over at Cartoon Research.
Oz is ingrained in American culture and remains a global icon. Today, most audiences encounter it through the 1939 film, contemporary interpretations like Wicked, or by revisiting Baum’s original 1900 classic. But beyond those familiar touchstones lies a much broader creative and cultural legacy. We hope this brief journey into the roots of Oz inspires you to explore its forgotten corners and rediscover the wonder that made it timeless in the first place.
Internet Archive’s Community Webs program has received a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and their Digitizing Hidden Collections program to digitize and provide open access to thirty local history collections from six partner organizations across the US and Canada.
“This grant lets us expand access outside of our building and really showcase the stories and lived experience of people and organizations that have been fighting for equality and doing important work throughout Atlanta,” said Derek T. Mosley, Archives Division Manager of the Auburn Avenue Research Library (AARL) on African American History and Culture in Atlanta, Georgia. AARL will receive digitization support for collections documenting leaders, artists, scholars, and advocacy groups in Atlanta. The personal papers of scholars and community leaders Duncan E. Teague, Craig Washington, Anthony “Tony” Daniels, and Dr. Shirlene Holmes will also be digitized.
The Pomo Afro Homos Records from the San Francisco Public Library will be digitized with support from CLIR
Four collections will be digitized from Colorado’s Pikes Peak Library District including the records of the Colorado Springs Pride Center, The Citizens Project, and the Pikes Peak Lavender Film Festival. A selection of related photographs from the Colorado Springs Gazette will also be made available digitally.
Invisible Histories will partner with the Birmingham Public Library to complete digitization of the papers of prominent leaders in the lesbian communities of Mississippi and Alabama. “Invisible Histories is thrilled to be able to make these very rare and important examples of Southern Lesbian history available for everyone,” Invisible Histories Co-Executive Director Joshua Burford stated.
The Marge Ragona Papers from the holdings of Invisible Histories/Birmingham Public Library will be digitized
Collections to be digitized from the San Francisco Public Library include the papers of local authors and activists Barbara M. Cameron and Christopher Hewitt as well as the records of the local theater group Pomo Afro Homos. The ArQuives, based in Canada, will digitize the personal papers of early figures in Canada’s gay liberation movement.
Photograph from the Gerald Hannon fonds from project partner The ArQuives
The Rochester Public Library will digitize the personal papers of Rochester-based gay rights communities and the records of related cultural organizations. “The eight collections chosen for digitization as part of this grant are a treasure trove for researchers seeking to understand how LGBTQIA+ life and activism has evolved outside of major centers such as New York City and San Francisco,” explained Shalis Worthy, Historical Services Coordinator for the Rochester Public Library.
Once digitized, these collections will be accessible to local communities and researchers all over the world, providing valuable evidence of community history and culture.
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.
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
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.
