Open News: Winter 2021

As of January 1, 2021, works from 1925 enter the U.S. public domain

Works published in 1925 were expected to enter the public domain in 2001 until congress extended the copyright term to 95 years. 1925 is a significant year in literary and cultural history, works include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, silent film star Buster Keaton in Go West, and music including the jazz standard Sweet Georgia Brown and songs by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey.

Open Textbook Pilot Program renewed for another $7 million

The U.S. Department of Education will have another $7 million in grants for Open Textbook Pilot projects between now and September 30, 2021. Under instructions from Congress, the Department is directed to run a new competition in 2021 with the same terms as 2020’s, including a minimum 60 day application period. 

Community-Led Open Education Conference Expands Reach in 2020 and Beyond

The annual Open Education Conference was held virtually in November with more than1,500 attendees from over 70 countries. After founder of the conference stepped down last year, it was organized and led by volunteers from the open education community. The conference was held over five days of with over 200 live meetings and pre-recorded sessions about open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open education initiatives. All recorded sessions will be openly available.

Introducing Pressbooks Directory

Pressbooks, a publishing platform for many openly licensed books, has introduced a searchable directory of all its publications. The directory searches the books metadata and can be filtered by subject, license, network, language, publisher, word count, number of H5P activities and more.

January 2021

February 2021

Past Events

with recordings