Making the public domain accessible | continuum | University of Minnesota Libraries

"HathiTrust Digital Library contains vast numbers of books scanned from the collections of a group of international libraries — including the University of Minnesota Libraries. Millions of those books are open for anybody to use in their research and reading. But determining which are in the public domain and which have copyright protections can be tricky. The Libraries is working with HathiTrust to make the “hidden” public domain titles available to all.  Selecting eligible books Books in the public domain — those that no longer fall under copyright protection — can be viewed by any researcher anywhere with an internet connection. Some of these are well known: Little Women, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and Moby Dick were all published in America by American authors before 1923 so their original editions are eligible to be scanned and shared."