The Public Domain which comprises all the knowledge and information that the public can access and use for free has been one of the focus of Free Knowledge Africa in our movement of promoting and bridging the content gap as regards Africa. Over the years, many projects have been carried out in a bid to gather public domain work in Nigeria, including digitization projects. These works can be found on publicdomain.ng
2023 Public Domain Day Celebration
This year we had our first physical public domain celebration event in partnership with the Nigerian Library Association, Kwara State chapter. The event took place on the 29th of March 2023 at the National Library, Offa Road, Ilorin Kwara State, Nigeria. It was an impactful event with over 40 people in attendance.
Public Domain Digitization Project
The Public Domain Digitization Project had the goal of Digitizing Public Domain Works in Nigeria. This Project Carried out by Free Knowledge Africa hoped to identify, compile, and digitize these Public Domain works and make them easily and freely accessible to the public.
In a bid to actualize these goals, Free Knowledge Africa went into a partnership with the National Library of Nigeria. Members of the Free Knowledge Africa team organized a training session on the 1st of September 2023 which was held at the National Library of Nigeria Headquarters in Abuja.
These topics discussed include The Open Movement and its relevance, The Creative Commons, and Wikimedia. Librarians as content Curators and Producers, Digitization, and the role of Librarians in the Nigerian Public Domain was also emphasized.
At the end of the Project, we were able to identify these Public Domain Works.
The breakdown of the Public Domain Work identified is as follows
1st Set of Works Identified – 147 Books and 146 Pictures
2nd Set of Works Identified – 87 Books and 69 Newspapers
The total Number of Works Identified was 449 intellectual resources.
The plan is to create a repository of these Public Domain works which will be available to everyone.
Public Domain and Historical Knowledge
In our bid to keep on advocating for Open Access to Cultural Heritage Institutions, we organized an advocacy/ training session at the FCT Branch, National Library of Nigeria. This advocacy came during a digitization project of Newspapers in the Nigerian Public Domain. Newspapers like the Daily Comet, West African Pilot, Southern Nigerian Defenders, Daily Service, and many more published during the pre-independence era were identified and digitized in a bit to build a repository of Public Domain materials in Nigeria.
The event was held on the 26th of November, 2024, and in attendance were professionals in various fields, including librarians, legal practitioners, historians, researchers, corp members, and even students.
It was an engaging and interactive session. We discussed the Public Domain in Nigeria, keeping historical knowledge and making it openly accessible to the public. We delved into Nigeria’s historical knowledge and the gap Free Knowledge Africa had found in the documentation of our history, also an introduction to the concept of Freedom of Panorama, stating the limitations to Freedom of Panorama in Nigeria brought about by the signing of the 2022 Nigerian Copyright Act.
