Did you know that under previous Australian law, unpublished materials, including letters, diaries and shipping manifests,  remained in copyright in perpetuity?

This meant they were locked behind laws requiring you to seek permission from an often impossible to identify copyright owner before you could publish, adapt or even copy them.

Due to recent changes to that law, millions of items from our national collections – from Captain Cook’s carrot marmalade recipe and Henry Lawson’s letters to war posters – are now free to use.

To celebrate, Australia’s libraries and archives are declaring 2019 the Year of the Public Domain.

For more information about these changes to copyright law, click here to visit Australian Libraries Copyright Committee.

Image credit
Title: Women! help Australia’s sons win the war [picture] : buy war loan bonds
Created/Published: Sydney, John Sands, [1915-1918]
Copyright: Public Domain
From the collection of the National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-135721145/view