A colleague recently wrote to me to ask advice on how to investigate the copyright status of an article in a journal published in the 1930s. Unfortunately the Copyright Office's Circular 22, "How to investigate the copyright status of a work" (available in multiple formats from <http://www.copyright.gov/circs/>) only provides an overview of the process, but does not have specific recommendations. The terrific article by Samuel Demas and Jennie L. Brogdon entitled "Determining Copyright Status for Preservation and Access: Defining Reasonable Effort," Library Resources and Technical Services 41:4 (October, 1997): 323-334, only covers monographs, not serials.
What I told him I would do follows, but I would be interested to learn how others would approach the task.
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