January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all!

On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain.  They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and the final Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the German science-fiction film Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller, compositions by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, and a novelty song about ice cream. Of course, many genealogy books published in 1927 can now be legally copied as well.

Note: This applies only to the United States. The copyright terms in other countries are different.

You can read more, including long lists of 1927 notable books and movies that are now in the public domain, at: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2023/. I don’t see any genealogy works on the list, however.