It’s the first day of the New Year and it’s also the day that many international copyright works enter the public domain.
Public Domain Day is an international day when many items enter the public domain as copyright expired during the year prior and became available on the 1st Jan. However in Australia, our items differ and enter the public domain at different times i.e.: the exact date copyright expired rather than the end of that year. Although Australia may not release bulk records on the day, as they are progressively released when copyright expires, it is still a day of that many galleries, libraries, archives and museums use to highlight collections that had become free of copyright during that year.
For many countries, copyright on items ends at the end of the year in which the timeframe of the copyright expires and therefore becomes available in the public domain the next day being the 1st January. (There are always exceptions). For example, if an item was created on the 1st September 1955, and if copyright for that item was 70 years, then in many countries copyright ends on 31st Dec 2025 and becomes part of the public domain on the 1st January 2026.
Therefore archivists, genealogists, record agents, librarians and other researchers all look forward to “Public Domain Day” every year, to have access for more international records.
