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. Date | Items | % PD | No. PD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1400-1850 | 304587 | 100 | 304587 |
| 1850-1860 | 40970 | 100 | 40970 |
| 1860-1870 | 43734 | 100 | 43734 |
| 1870-1880 | 50564 | 95 | 48035 |
| 1880-1890 | 66857 | 90 | 60171 |
| 1890-1900 | 66883 | 85 | 56850 |
| 1900-1910 | 70360 | 65 | 45734 |
| 1910-1920 | 60489 | 40 | 24195 |
| 1920-1930 | 78670 | 25 | 19667 |
| 1930-1940 | 90576 | 10 | 9057 |
| 1940-1950 | 72692 | 6 | 4361 |
| 1950-1960 | 118251 | 0 | 0 |
| 1960-1970 | 262974 | 0 | 0 |
| 1970-2009 | 2130509 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 3458116 | 19 | 657361 |
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).
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:
Total (Black) and Public Domain (Red) Items per Year based on the CUL Catalogue for pre-1960 period.