Size of the Public Domain III

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

Here we are going to apply the results on Public Domain “proportions” derived in our previous post and thereby obtain best estimates of the UK public domain.

The logic is simple, and similar to that in our first post in the series: we will take the Public Domain proportions from Table 3 of our last post and combine with our (conservative) estimates for output based on library catalogues. Here are the results:

Pub. DateItems% PDNo. PD
1400-1850304587100304587
1850-18604097010040970
1860-18704373410043734
1870-1880505649548035
1880-1890668579060171
1890-1900668838556850
1900-1910703606545734
1910-1920604894024195
1920-1930786702519667
1930-194090576109057
1940-19507269264361
1950-196011825100
1960-197026297400
1970-2009213050900
Total345811619657361

UK Public Domain Totals Based on Cambridge University Library Data. Note, as discussed in previous posts, figures from British Library are approximately 3x larger (both for Public Domain and total items).

culbooks_counts_annual_1600-2001

Total (Black) and Public Domain (Red) Items per year based on the CUL Catalogue.

Zooming in to the pre-1960 period to get more detail:

culbooks_counts_annual_1600-1960

Total (Black) and Public Domain (Red) Items per Year based on the CUL Catalogue for pre-1960 period.