Yesterday was Public Domain Day and you have likely seen news stories about it. The Morning Brew has a brief story which includes the possibility of horror movies being made with public domain works. I hadn't considered that, but I can definitely imagine it and I expect it has already happened somewhere (perhaps memes or TicTic videos).
By the way, Wikipedia has an interesting list of what passed into the public domain in the U.S. and in other countries. Of course, the Internet Archive (and others) have lists. Among the works now in the public domain is "Singing in the Rain" which was used in the disturbing film, "A Clockwork Orange" in 1971.
Many people are talking about the copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). The U.S. Copyright Office is analyzing the issues around AI, but I wonder if that is moving too slowly given how AI is now all around us. Researchers at RAND have written the report, "Artificial Intelligence Impacts on Copyright Law" which I have found to be useful.
I should say that I am not a huge user of AI, although it is being built into things that I use daily. Most times those AI "pop-ups" are annoying because I know what I am trying to do and AI is slowing me down. I have used AI intentionally to help me rewrite awkward text, but I don't do that frequently. I mostly use AI to generate images for me like the one above. In other words, I'm not an AI convert. However, I know that there are libraries experiment with AI to see how it can be of use, and that some people are true AI converts.
I must say that I find ads for business products that use AI to be humorous because they have to state that the products are hallucination-free. Did we ever think we would need to say that about a product we're using?
The litigation Hachette v. Internet Archive concluded with the Second Circuit Court ruling against the Internet Archive, and the Archive deciding not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. There is much that has been said and could be said about this court case.
BTW Brewster Kahle and Kyle Courtney were interviewed by Chris Hayes during the summer (The End of Libraries as We Know Them?), which is about more than the litigation and worth listening to. I always appreciate Kyle's perspective on libraries, copyright, and access to materials.
I need to mention the continued effort to ban materials in libraries and the push-back that is occurring on that. For information on what has occurred, I suggest that you read EveryLibrary's report, "Wins, Warnings, and Ongoing Legislative Fights for Libraries in 2024."
While we have products being built or trained on digitized content, we will have organizations that need materials put into digital form, for example old church records. Yes, digitization is still needed. Depending on where you or your organization are in your digitization journey, consider reaching out to smaller institutions in your community and asking if they have information that needs to be preserved or if it would benefit them to have it available digitally. Birth, death, baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, membership, or land records are all things that may still be in paper form.
My focus in 2024 continued to be on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, (DEIAB) and anti-racism with Widerstand Consulting. 2024 had its challenges because of all the things happening around us (like politics). The question we are all asking is, "What will 2025 bring?" I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that those doing DEIAB and social justice work need to be ready for whatever it is. Personally, I believe that allies need bystander training and I hope communities will offer it. There are many resources online about bystander training. These are a few videos that I have found useful:
One of the things I have been doing regularly is writing articles for Widerstand's monthly newsletter which is free and available to all. I'm also posting frequently to Widerstand's LinkedIn page. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and following us on LinkedIn.
Well...that's my update! If we cross paths in 2025, please stop and say "hello!"
