On Wednesday, March 5, Emory Libraries hosted “The Expanding Public Domain,” a symposium celebrating Public Domain Day. Public Domain Day falls on January 1 of every year, when new works enter into the public domain. In 2025, works from 1929 and sound recordings from 1924 entered into the public domain. The symposium was originally supposed to take place earlier in the semester, but had been rescheduled to March due to January’s winter storm.
The event featured opening remarks from Lisa Macklin, associate vice provost and university librarian, and followed with presentations and a roundtable discussion featuring faculty, graduate students, and librarians.
The roundtable was moderated by Hannah Griggs, humanities librarian for English, and featured the following speakers: Dan Sinykin, professor of English; graduate students Maggie Dryden, Nia Judelson, and Angelica Johnson; and N’Kosi Oates, curator of African American Collections in the Rose Library.
Each speaker gave a short presentation summarizing the significance of the public domain to their research and teaching. The roundtable included an engaging discussion of the impact of copyright on research and teaching, the use of AI and the public domain, and how the public domain opens up opportunities to reshape the narrative of literary and cultural history in the US context.
Attendees also had the opportunity to view a display of books curated by Carrie Hintz, associate director of the Rose Library. The display featured notable works that recently entered the public domain, including rare editions of Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” (1926), Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (1929), “The Well of Loneliness” by Radcliffe Hall (1928), William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” (1929), Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” (1929), and “Passing” by Nella Larsen.
The symposium was followed by a reception in the Schatten Gallery on the third floor of the Woodruff Library.
“The Expanding Public Domain” was organized by RESC librarians John Morgenstern, James Steffen, and Hannah Griggs.
—by Hannah Griggs, humanities librarian for English