At 12:00pm BST today, as midnight struck over the Pacific island of American Samoa and the 1st of May truly ended all over the world, so did end the inaugural Public Domain Review Fundraiser. In 58 days, with the help of 676 wonderful supporters we managed to leapfrog our target of $20,000 and raise an amazing $22,070, ca. £14200 / €16,800. Thank you all so much, we’ve been really blown away by your amazing generosity.
We saw donations come in from all over the world, and the Tote Bags have been sent out to homes far and wide across 6 of the 7 continents on the planet (still missing that ever elusive Antarctica). There weren’t just offers of monetary support – a few people also pledged their skills and time. We’ve had a very kind offer to build a PDR App for Android which is currently in progress, and also a printmaker interested in partnering up to do some prints for us using an old Victorian letterpress. There are also other interesting collaborations currently being discussed – all to be revealed soon!
We have lots of really exciting things lined up for the future, and thanks to all the incredible generosity we’ve seen we can them happen. Amongst others, we have coming soon a brand new monthly feature – “Guest Curator of the Month” – in which an invited curator shall do a guest post focusing on works in their institutions openly licensed digital collections: the British Library, Rijksmuseum and others are onboard already. In addition to improving the website with new features like these, part of the work we’ll also be doing is, of course, trying to secure additional funding which we’ll be very much focusing on over the next few months.
All in all, very exciting times ahead. And, again, a huge thank you to all who donated!
And in case you missed it, here’s the super-extended version of the fundraising film: aptly retitled “SAVED!” and with a new happy ending!
Adam Green is Editor of The Public Domain Review.
