Librarians and archivists are identifying and hoping to digitize books that are secretly in the public domain due to a copyright loophole. They are hoping to upload the texts to the Internet Archive for viewing. 

Copyright and fair use laws dictate that all books published before 1924 are in the public domain. Books published from 1964 to the present are likely in copyright and if so, can remain in copyright for 95 years from their publication date. A large portion of the books published between 1923 and 1964 never renewed their copyright and should be freely accessible.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) recently posted about the difficulties of determining which books are still in copyright. With the help of a grant, the NYPL has been converting old copyright records into a more readable XML format to determine which books can be digitized for readers’ pleasure.

You can even help NYPL with this project, if you so desire!