| The very best way to be sure the materials you are | | | | books that you have the opportunity to purchase |
| using are truly public domain is to go right to the | | | | and turn into a product. |
| original published book. But finding an original source | | | | A word of warning |
| book can be quite difficult. Alibris makes it much | | | | The search results are only as good as the data input |
| easier. | | | | by the sellers. This means that a certain percentage |
| What is Alibris? | | | | of books will not match your search terms and a |
| In their own words: | | | | certain number of dates will be wrong - specifically I |
| "Alibris connects people who love books, music and | | | | see lots of books with a publication date of 1900 |
| movies to thousands of independent sellers around | | | | which is clearly wrong. (I'm guessing that 1900 is the |
| the world. Our proprietary technology and advanced | | | | default if no date is entered.) |
| logistics allow us to offer over 30 million used, new | | | | Therefore, before purchasing a book, it is generally a |
| and hard-to-find titles to consumers, libraries and | | | | good idea to send a note to the particular seller to |
| other institutions." | | | | verify the publication date before investing money in |
| Basically if you know Amazon, you understand Alibris. | | | | the book. |
| The crucial difference is that Alibris allows you to do | | | | While I would much prefer seeing the book before |
| searches based on publication date and that makes it | | | | making a purchase to verify that it meets my needs, |
| very valuable indeed. | | | | if the price is reasonable enough, I figure it is just |
| How to search. | | | | part of the cost of researching for the product. |
| To start a search, you want to go to the Advanced | | | | Oh, and this is also a good way to search for |
| Search page. Just to to and click on their advanced | | | | available books published after 1922 that are in the |
| search button right where it says books. It is located | | | | public domain. For instance if you are looking at doing |
| right below the basic search in the left hand corner | | | | a diet related product, you could search for books |
| of the home page. | | | | say before 1960 and then when you find books with |
| This brings you to a page with many input options. In | | | | interesting titles, you can then do a copyright search |
| addition to the standard title, keyword, etc. inputs is | | | | as discussed in another article on this site (link at end) |
| one very valuable input near the bottom of the form. | | | | to see if the book fell into the public domain. And |
| It is called Publication Year - and one of its options is | | | | who knows, this could result in finding a diamond in |
| labeled Before. And that is very powerful. | | | | the rough. In fact, at least for diet books, there have |
| Lets say you were looking for a book on baseball | | | | been several bestsellers in recent years based on |
| that was in the public domain. Put the word baseball | | | | either a public domain book or a government |
| in the title and in the publication date/before field put | | | | publication. |
| 1923. | | | | Good luck with your searching. |
| This particular research pulled up over 200 possible | | | | |