COURTESY: THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN AT DUKE LAW SCHOOL
Take note, aspiring animators: We’re officially 95 years out from Mickey Mouse’s 1928 debut, which means that Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy are fair game for future use. Each year on Jan. 1, enthusiasts watch as a new bevvy of works enters the public domain — and in the world of intellectual property, 2024 started with a bang.
Many of the works added to the catalog this year reflect the major sociocultural shifts of the 1920s, and were greeted with the customary controversy on their first outings. This is particularly true of many of 1928’s landmark novels: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, and Dark Princess by W.E.B Du Bois. Major aesthetic strides were also being made in film; The Passion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Dryer, starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti, is still regarded as a game-changing work of art, and elsewhere “talkies” were beginning to take over after their introduction the year prior.
Audio recordings follow slightly different rules when entering public domain, including a 100-year copyright, compared to the 95 years for film, literature, and written musical compositions. That means that James P. Johnson’s 1923 recording of his song Charleston, the tune that set the 1920s roaring, can be downloaded for free from the Library of Congress.
When a work enters the public domain, the public no longer needs to seek the artist’s permission to copy or use the work. This opens the door for creative riffs on the classics, and makes public domain materials available free of charge.
Here are some places to check out the newest creative works now in the public domain:
Interested in finding out more about U.S. copyright law and how to determine a work’s copyright status? The Scholarly Impact Department helps faculty work through complex copyright issues, such as what can be used in the classroom, how to retain your rights as an author, and how to apply Creative Commons licensing. Feel free to send an email to mahrya-burnett@uiowa.edu to set up a consultation. You might also try these excellent copyright resources:
Digital Copyright Slider – This Flash-based slider provides copyright status for works, depending on when they were published and whether copyright was renewed.
UI Libraries Copyright Guide – This guide provides the basics on copyright issues, such as Fair Use, seeking permissions, author rights, and licensing.
Matthew Butler is senior developer and research manager at the UI Libraries’ Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio.
Matthew Butler of the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio has been named the 2023 recipient of the Arthur Benton University Librarian’s Award for Excellence in recognition of his far-reaching contributions to digital librarianship. In his role as senior developer and research manager at the Studio, Butler has personally developed custom code to be used as a research tool by institutions worldwide.
Butler has served the Studio and the UI Libraries as a whole for the past 12 years, during which he has worked closely with the university community to develop and disseminate well over 100 scholarly research and digital humanities projects. His work is both creative and highly technical, embodying an interdisciplinary ethos.
“Matthew’s work has transformed the relationship between software development and the humanities, creating a necessary bridge from one discipline to another,” says Jack B. King University Librarian John Culshaw. “In doing so, he has furthered the University of Iowa’s reputation for cutting-edge digital scholarship on the world stage—and we can only guess at the vast potential his work will unlock in years to come.”
Peer institutions have taken notice of Butler’s innovative work, and his open-source code has already been implemented at Yale University, the University of Oxford, and the Library of Virginia. In his letter of support, Studio Director Tom Keegan calls Butler “a polymath whose technical expertise and research creativity have helped bring a number of faculty, staff, and graduate student projects into being.” He also emphasized Matthew’s integral role in “some of the most exciting and groundbreaking digital scholarly work at Iowa.”
Butler’s creativity is likely a reflection of his training in intermedia and video art, for which he earned an MFA from the UI. Each of his recommenders cited the breadth and variety of Butler’s work, which spans multiple areas of study. In partnership with recommender Bryce Dietrich of Purdue University’s Department of Political Science, Butler developed an application which was later used by the National Institute of Health to comb through audio data and predict depression in elderly populations with an accuracy rate of almost 90%. He’s also currently working with UI sociology professor Louise Seamster on a project to address the water crisis is Flint, Michigan, by mining data from emails.
One of his earliest achievements at the UI Libraries was developing the platform DIY History, which enlists members of the public for help in transcribing handwritten documents, including letters dating back to the Civil War. Since the platform’s launch in 2011, over 100,000 pages of archival material has been transcribed and is now searchable in the Iowa Digital Library. Donna Brooks, Butler’s nominator and program manager at the Studio, calls him “a rare talent, tirelessly dedicated to the development of original work product and custom solutions that enable UI scholars to work with data in their domain of expertise.”
Each letter in support of Butler’s nomination made mention of his collaborative spirit, which makes him a valuable partner in guiding faculty and graduate students in the pursuit of their goals. Dietrich said his professional relationship with Butler has been key to his success in research. “I have never been more enthusiastic about a nomination,” Dietrich says. “I miss many things about the University of Iowa, but working with Matt at the Studio is near the top of that list.”
Butler will be formally acknowledged as the recipient of the Benton Award during an event in the new year.
The Arthur Benton University Librarian’s Award for Excellence is awarded each year to a member of the UI Libraries’ professional staff who has demonstrated outstanding commitment and leadership in furthering its mission to serve the university community. In addition to formal recognition, the award includes a grant of $2,000 for professional development that will support Butler’s research projects or publications related to library services.
The late Dr. Arthur Benton, professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, established the endowment to make this annual award possible.
The $11K award will assist with a project involving 173 wax and gold-moulded cylinder recordings of Czech music and recitations dating from 1903 to 1908. Cylinders were one of the earliest forms of sound technology and the first to allow for mass production and distribution of sound in recorded form. Katie Buehner, director of the Rita Benton Music Library, and Daniel Johnson, digital preservation librarian, are the project coordinators.
“We’re thrilled to receive this grant because it is very likely that many of the recordings have not been played or listened to in over 100 years and are at great risk of degradation and complete loss,” says Buehner, who submitted the grant proposal. “It will allow everyone to experience a slice of Czech Americans’ cultural life, and researchers will have the opportunity to study Bohemian transplantation in the actual voice of those who made the journey.”
In addition, this unexplored catalog of amateur and professional recordings will allow sound recording scholars to compare the practices of established labels with that of an independent, amateur producer. One hundred wax cylinders are from Eduard (Ed. on the cylinders) Jedlička—a jeweler who was one of the Czech sound-recording pioneers in the United States—and constitute some of the earliest recordings made for a specific ethnic group, including music, poetry, stories, and comedy. The 70 Columbia recordings are rare European issues of Czech music and comedy.
“The UI Libraries is committed to the long-term preservation and public access for these digitized wax cylinder recordings and all recordings in our care,” says John Culshaw, Jack B. King university librarian. “Katie and Daniel’s work on this project will further the impactful work already done to provide the ability to hear long-lost, rare audio created by and/or for Czech-American immigrants or Czech peoples.”
A separate aspect of the project will transcribe the Czech content and translate the text into English. It’s an effort that will be coordinated by Filip Šír, coordinator for digitization of audio documents for the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic. Endpoint Audio Labs will do the media reformatting.
The unique partnership between Buehner and Šír is continuing to unearth this music and make it accessible to people all over the world. The oldest known Czech music recordings in the U.S. call the Rita Benton Music Library home, thanks to the generosity of two people with Iowa ties.
In 2018, Alan and Ann January donated 150 wax cylinders and a gramophone player to the library. Buehner has been digitizing the collection and found that at least 13 of those donated cylinders were one-of-a-kind early Czech music recordings made in the U.S. by Jedlička.
That’s what led to her connecting with Šír, who has been searching around the world for the lost recordings of early Czech sound recordings and the stories of the people behind them. Since then, Buehner and Šír connected with descendants of Jedlička, who donated the remaining stock from his store, an additional 173 cylinders, to the university. It is this collection that will be digitized with the grant funds.
To put things into perspective, the Library of Congress holds a collection of 47 Jedlička cylinders, but most are late in the production run (earliest held is no. 151). However, the January collection includes cylinder nos. 4, 6, 10, 29, 66, and 68, making them the earliest extant recordings of Czech music made on American soil. Until they can be digitized, the songs and stories on the cylinders remain to be heard. They were received without the original containers, and though some had catalog numbers, a precious few had titles.
You can listen to current recordings and also learn more about Rita Benton Music Library’s collection and Alan and Ann January via:
One of 100 brown wax cylinders from Eduard (Ed.) Jedlička—a jeweler who was one of the Czech sound-recording pioneers in the United States—dating from 1903-1908. Courtesy Tim Schoon, UI Office of Strategic CommunicationOne of 73 gold-moulded cylinders from Columbia Records featuring recordings of Czech music and recitations dating from 1903-1908. Courtesy Tim Schoon, UI Office of Strategic Communication
The Main Library will be closed from Friday, Oct. 27, at 5 p.m. to Monday, Oct. 30, at 7:30 a.m. because of a water outage throughout the building due to an ENGIE utility construction project.
You’re encouraged to use the Libraries’ online delivery service to request books in InfoHawk+ before Friday to have them sent to your office, home, or another campus library.
In addition, the Art Library, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, Lichtenberger Engineering Library, Marvin A. Pomerantz Business Library, Rita Benton Music Library, and Sciences Library have open hours on Sunday, Oct. 29. The Hardin Library is also open on Saturday, Oct. 28, from 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Happy Open Access Week! We’re celebrating this year’s theme “Community over Commercialization” with a faculty panel discussion on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, at noon CDT on Zoom. Panelists include Leonardo Marchini, DEO and professor in Preventative and Community Dentistry, Kembrew McLeod, department chair and professor in Communication Studies, Maurine Neiman, professor in Biology, and Deborah Whaley, department chair and professor in African American Studies.
In what promises to be a lively discussion, panelists will discuss their experiences with open access publishing and open scholarship more broadly. They will also share their views on the benefits and barriers to the free and open sharing of research outputs with the public and the academic community.
Register here for the Libraries’ Open Access Faculty Panel. We look forward to seeing you!
Open Access at Iowa
Open Access Publishing
According to data from SciVal, 58.51% of the University of Iowa’s total publishing activity in 2020-2023 is Open Access. Keep up the great work, Hawkeyes! Browse open access research and scholarship by UI authors on Iowa Research Online.
If you can’t publish in an open access journal, you can still make your work open access by depositing your accepted manuscripts, pre-prints, research data and other work in the university’s institutional repository, Iowa Research Online. Publisher restrictions on versions and embargoes may apply, so please contact lib-ir@uiowa.edu or your subject librarian for more information.
Ask Us!
No matter your path to open access, the UI Libraries can help. The specialist librarians in our Scholarly Impact department stay up-to-date on funder and publisher policies so we can provide personalized assistance to meet your needs. We also offer workshops on Publishing Open Access and Data Sharing and Publication, customized for your department or research group. Please contact us or your subject librarian for assistance.
Join faculty leaders from all over campus in celebrating International Open Access Week 2023 with a panel discussion on the theme of Open Access: Community over Commercialization.
The UI Libraries’ Scholarly Impact department will be hosting the webinar on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, at noon CDT.
In what promises to be a lively discussion, panelists will discuss their experiences with open access publishing and open scholarship more broadly. They will also share their views on the benefits and barriers to the free and open sharing of research outputs with the public and the academic community.
Panelists
Leonardo Marchini, DEO and professor, Preventative and Community Dentistry
Kembrew McLeod, department chair and professor, Communication Studies
Maurine Neiman, professor, Biology
Deborah Whaley, department chair and professor, African American Studies
Moderator: Sara Scheib, director, Scholarly Impact, UI Libraries
The University of Iowa Libraries is seeking nominations for the Arthur Benton University Librarian’s Award for Excellence. Funded by a generous endowment, this award acknowledges a Libraries staff member’s professional contribution in the practice of librarianship, service to the profession, scholarship, or leadership which has had a significant impact or innovation to the operations of the Libraries or the university. The award recipient will receive $2,000 to be used for professional development activities.
Any member of the UI community may submit a nomination for the award.
Nominations are due by Friday, October 27. Please forward this message to faculty and graduate assistants in your department and encourage them to submit nominations. Thank you for your assistance.
*The University Libraries includes the Main Library, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, and the Art, Business, Engineering, Music, and Science Libraries. (Professional staff in the Law Library and other campus departmental library staff are not eligible.)
The University of Iowa Libraries are pleased to announce a Read & Publish agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) for 2023 that provides continued access to all RSC journal content and supports open access publishing in RSC journals. The new agreement allows corresponding authors from the University of Iowa to publish a limited number of open access articles in RSC journals for free.
The agreement purchases vouchers to cover the article processing charges (APCs) for manuscripts accepted by Dec. 31 of this year, including:
Five open access Read & Publish vouchers for RSC’s hybrid journals (all other RSC journals)
To confirm your eligibility, make sure you are listed as the corresponding author, both in the online submission system and in your manuscript. Use your university email address to submit your manuscript and state your institutional affiliation and email address in your manuscript.
When your manuscript is accepted, you will have the chance to choose a gold open access publication route, which will trigger a voucher. Authors will retain copyright and the article will be published under a Creative Commons license. Detailed instructions are available from RSC.
Sarah Keen recently completed her first academic year serving as university archivist in Special Collections and Archives in the University of Iowa Libraries
Keen recently completed her first year as university archivist.
She came to Iowa in August 2022 from upstate New York, where she served as Colgate University Libraries’ university archivist and head of Special Collections and University Archives. Previously, she was technical services archivist and American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences project archivist at Cornell University Library, and archivist for the Jane Harman Congressional Papers Project at Smith College. She earned her Master in Science Information from the University of Michigan and her Bachelor of Arts from Alma College.
Keen took some time to reflect on her first year at the UI Libraries.
How was your first academic year at the University of Iowa?
I’m thrilled at the warm welcome I’ve received and how interested the members of the campus community are in preserving and exploring the past and present of the UI.
Can you share a few of the highlights?
Creating a pop-up exhibit with colleague Liz Riordan, lead outreach and instruction librarian, for the Hawkeye Distinguished Veterans Award event and attending the awards presentation.
Meeting Hualing Nieh Engle, co-founder of the International Writing Program.
Hosting an open house for the University High School Class of 1965 reunion.
Collaborating with some students and faculty in the theatre arts to document the history and present works from that department.
Has anything really surprised you?
I would say it’s more of an ever-evolving wonder of learning all the things going on at the UI, so frequently experiencing that sense of “wow.” Recently, I’ve enjoyed learning more about the built environment on campus, the histories of various buildings, and how the campus was impacted by and recovered from the 2008 flood. Also, a Libraries colleague introduced me to the Iowa Raptor Project and their work in raising awareness about birds of prey and conserving their populations.
What do you expect to be the collecting priorities for Special Collections and Archives over the coming years?
Broadly we will focus on documenting historically underrepresented aspects of the university community, and we will be doing some assessment work over the next couple years to gather more information on what those areas might be. We will be keeping in mind the university’s bicentennial coming up in 2047 and how we can help the community share stories that give a fuller appreciation of our history.
What do you enjoy about being an archivist?
I enjoy learning about people’s lives and their experiences as individuals and with the organizations they create. It’s been fascinating learning about the university, its complex history, and its wide range of activities while collaborating with colleagues across campus.
One last question. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not digging through the archives?
I love rowing, hiking, and listening to music. I’m also a Red Sox fan and enjoy reading mystery books and watching mystery/detective shows. It has been 20 years since I last lived in the Midwest, so I look forward to continue getting reacquainted with the region.