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Spoke to a gen z person the other night and apparently the young folks don't know about the very legal sites from which you can access public domain media (including Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and other Victorian gothic horror stories)?
Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"
Anyway I'm gonna put this in a few Choice Tags (sorry dracula fans I DID mention it though so it's fair game) and then put some Cool Links in a reblog so this post will still show UP in said tags lmao.
Spreading the news to my followers - if you weren’t aware of this before, here’s the link to Project Gutenberg - https://www.gutenberg.org/
Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain. You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.
It is free.
It is legal.
I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.
I reread the Anne series several years back - they were free through this. I need to reread Pride and Prejudice at least once a year, and my e-book version is from this. Someone recommended Jekyll and Hyde to me a few weeks back and I got a free copy from this. When I went to Haworth on my last holiday before the plague times, I brought books by the Bronte sisters with me to read or reread that I downloaded from here. It’s a great resource.
Yes yes yes! I was honestly so flabbergasted that this young person hadn't heard of the gutenberg project! It's been around for AGES, maybe longer than the kindle has? And it's such a huge project and wonderful resource! It used to be a household name (or maybe that's just my family, thanks to my dad being a cheapskate nerd [affectionate]). I was so glad to be able to share this resource and others with them though, and I wanted to make sure no one else was missing out!
If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!
And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!
I'm so excited to see people falling in love with classic media through Dracula Daily! Let's keep that fire blazing!
Also, if you can't handle reading things, check out libirvox.org! it's a free audio book project taking public domain works and people doing free audiobooks! there's a lot of great stuff on there, but it takes things in the public domain and makes audio books out of them!
it's a super nice project, and you can find some really nice readers there!
Also don't think a book is old because it's in the public domain
lots of writers and publishers are prepared to waive future profits for entirely petty reasons
because of this the entire works of Philip K Dick [petty writer who found himself with lots of hangers on during his life] and HP Lovecraft [his publisher - who was his wife and hated him] became public domain on their death
Sherlock Holmes entered public domain this year, it's always worth checking because you can save a fortune
and the more popular the classic - the more likely someone has uploaded it
Anything published (in the US) from 1927 or earlier (this number goes up every year for quite a while), and
Anything published between 1928 and 1963 that wasn't renewed, and
Anything published before 1989 without a proper copyright notice.
(Don't go looking for things in that third category unless you've studied a LOT about copyright law. Mostly that covers things like "weird little newsletters" and "self-published booklets" and sometimes fanzines. But most publications have a copyright notice in them.)
There's also some oddball exemptions here and there; copyright law is a tentacled mess. But those are the basic guidelines. (Except for audio. Audio has its own set of rules. It's weird.) (I mentioned tentacles, did I not? Double the amount of them you were thinking of.)
There are a lot of works from the 50s and early 60s that were not renewed, especially short stories published in magazines.
Project Gutenberg began in 1971; the first text was the US Declaration of Independence, shared through the university computer system. That was the start of "hey computers + public domain text = FREE BOOKS FOR EVERYONE."
Adding on that Project Gutenberg is not just Eng language texts either! I know specifically about the French texts because I did independent study French lit in high school and all my sources were Project Gutenberg acquired (Candide my beloathed) but there's many open source texts available in a number of languages.
Oh man, yeah, young people definitely need to learn this. I read so many public domain things when I was fresh out of college and penniless but still needed entertainment. Just going straight to Wikisource works too:
And yes, Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. But I got bored with Sherlock Holmes after a few months, and became much more pumped when I discovered his mirror opposite, Arsene Lupin. Because when you're not only young and penniless but living through the Great Recession, what you really want to read about isn't the world's greatest detective solving crimes. It's the world's greatest thief robbing fat cats blind while pantsing the police along the way.
And you can Ctrl-F find words in electronic texts.
This is so powerful that in the old times they made a whole-ass index of every word in the Bible, called a concordance. It is now possible for every electronic book
do you ever think about how a series of tiny choices like “I guess I’ll watch that show” can like totally and entirely change huge aspects of your life
Can you imagine being fuckin being lost in the desert for a couple days and out of nowhere hearing Africa by Toto?? I would lose my fuckin shit that would be the moment id be like damn im actually losing it and gonna die out here, what a banger tho.
A question I get asked a lot while working at a public library is "how do you deal with homeless people?"
And the answer is, we don't.
The unhoused people who come here seeking refuge 99% of the time understand that they will be kicked out if they misbehave.
The people you have to watch out for are Jessica, who only came because the kid she didn't want had to visit for a homework assignment and she just *needs* to yell at her child for asking to borrow two books or stay an extra five minutes, or Michael, who came in to look at porn on our computers for whatever fucking reason, or Karen who just wanted to come by to throw a fit that the particular book she wanted was checked out and harrass our staff about our collection being too limited.
99% of the time, the people we need to ban are middle to upper-middle class white people while the homeless and mentally ill/disabled people mind their own damn business and are honestly some of the best patrons we have.
I bring this up because today we had a man come in. He stopped at the desk, pulled up a chair and said "I'm newly homeless and was living in my car. I'm disabled. It was impounded. It's raining. I don't have a phone and I don't know where to go tonight."
And we did what we could to help. He was incredibly kind and patient despite his obvious anxiety and stress, more than most able bodied, housed patrons are to us under much less dire conditions. I liked knowing that we were the first place he came.
We have so many people like this who come in everyday. Many are quiet and keep to themselves, but sometimes they talk to us.
They tell us about how they're taking a few courses on a scholarship they applied for from our library's computer at the local community college to get their diploma. Or ask about a manga or dvd or book we might have to help them pass the time.
One woman, who comes in daily with her tattered walker always says hello to me and likes to work on the new jigsaw puzzle with me when we set one out.
So like, treat unhoused people like people. Treat disabled people like people. I don't want my library to feel like the only safe space in the world, but I'm glad it can be one of them.
I'm so sick of hearing about how "the homeless are ruining everything" when they are some of the kindest, most respectful people here. Sometimes they mutter, might not have had a place to shower, and might need a little extra space for their backpacks but that's FINE. It Doesn't Matter Actually. None of that is a problem or any of my business to care about (unless they request help/services), and I also don't think it's any of yours.
libraries provide vital and lifesaving services and i will die on the hill you have to let people who are mentally ill and disabled and homeless and politically disagreeable to you still access those rescourses. its simply too important to society
i know micro SDs are like a technological marvel but sometimes i'm like...... okay but i should not be able to swallow 128GBs of data. i simply should not have the ability to do that
this is the entire contents of my Nintendo 3DS and i could just, like, throw it back with a glass of water. that shouldn’t be possible. like that shouldn’t even be an option
That last post I reblogged got me thinking again about how people can’t separate their idea of manhood from violence.
It’s like some people are capable of imagining womanhood without submission but can’t imagine manhood without dominance. Like for some reason in their minds women can escape their gender norms and make a new definition of what gender is for themselves but men can’t.
My cishet dad has often told me that he found feminist theory to be very freeing. It told him that yes men can be gentle and caring. Yes men can be sensitive. Being a man means what you want it to mean.
I’ve met other cishet men that feel the same way. I really do like talking with cis men about gender sometimes. You really see them become a lot happier when they fully internalize the idea that being a man means whatever they want it to mean.
i was taking this families order and the dad needed a second to decide so i was chatting with his kids and i was like “oooh are you guys twins” and then a voice from under the table went “YOURE CLOSE MAAM” then A THIRD KID popped up and did some karate moves at me and the dad just looked so tired
Every time I hear a news item about some passenger trying to open the door on an airplane I just laugh because what, is Superman there? You got someone who can bench 20 tons?
i support universal free healthcare for one simple reason: if you are diagnosed with a terminal illness you should quit your job. quitting your job is the correct response to terminal illness. but you can’t do that if your healthcare is tied to your job
listen if somebody knows that they will be dead in a years time, and you are forcing them to continue to come into work, that’s fucked up. terminally ill people should be able to quit their jobs and live their last few months to the fullest. i don’t get how that’s a controversial opinion
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