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    The Public Domain Review

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    1172 posts in Collections featuring public domain content from 229 source institutions; 364 essays, including 29 in Curator’s Choice and 20 in Conjectures, from 306 authors; and 931 prints in our online shop.

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    A hand-picked selection of recently published books which in some way tap into the tastes and concerns of The Public Domain Review. For any sales made through our store we'll get 10% commission and a matching 10% goes to independent bookstores.
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    PDR Index

    Alphabet made of humans, Butter churning as sexual innuendo, Cats as musical instrument

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    Library of Congress
    Library of Congress126 collectionsOn the WebOn PDR
    The Metropolitan Museum
    The Metropolitan Museum24 collectionsOn the WebOn PDR
    US National Library of Medicine
    US National Library of Medicine18 collectionsOn the WebOn PDR
    Wellcome Collection
    Wellcome Collection43 collectionsOn the WebOn PDR
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    Contributors

    Meet Jeff Wheelwright, Frank Key, Marieke van Delft, and the 303 other Authors who have contributed to The Public Domain Review

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    We’re always looking for ways to create and play with material in the public domain. Play our caption competition or make animated GIFs from archival film or image collages. Suggest new forms to create.

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    Conjectures

    We launched our Conjectures series as a laboratory for experiments with historical form and historical method. Why might such a thing be wanted? And why here on The Public Domain Review? The last thirty years has witnessed a genuine revolution in history. The digitization of vast bodies of historical source material (books, archives, images), together with new technologies of access to those sources (the internet, search engines, text tools), has transformed the way we see, feel, read, and imagine what came before the present. The Public Domain Review was born in response to this new world…

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    Curator’s Choice

    Our Curator’s Choice series came to an end in February 2016. Each month we featured a special guest post from a gallery, library, archive or museum curator reflecting upon a group of works in one of their open digital collections. This series aimed to be a celebratory spotlight on both the institutions making the exciting steps of openly licensing their digital collections and also the curators that work every day with such collections – as well, of course, as being a celebration of the content itself.

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