LibraryLaw Blog: Investigating the copyright status of a serial

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.

The first thing I would do is make sure that the work was copyrighted in the first place. You can look for the proper copyright notice and date in the volume. You can also check by looking at the Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 2 (Periodicals) in the relevant volume in the 1930s (let's say 1934).

Assuming that the journal either has a copyright notice or had been registered, the copyright would have had to be renewed. Since works had to be renewed in their 28th year, I would add 28 years to the copyright date to get 1952 in this example. I would then turn to the back of the CCE Periodicals volume for where Renewals are listed. I would check the periodical title in the renewals list or, if there are multiple issues in one volume, in the title index at the end of the volume. (The Title Index will include an "R" at the end of the entry if it is a renewal). I usually look at the year in question, and also the year preceding and following (since there was no assurance that the Copyright Office would publish the information in the same year that it was renewed).

Authors could also separately renew their copyright in contributions to periodicals. These are recorded in Part 1 of the CCE in a section called "Contributions to Periodicals." Again there is a Renewals section at the end of each volume. I would check the author and the title in the relevant issues (again using the right year and one on either side). I would record the results of all of my investigations on a worksheet that includes the volume and page number of each volume I examined.

As Mary noted earlier, there is an online database that may help. Michael Lesk has made a searchable version of the book renewals (including "Contributions to Periodicals"). It is at <http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~lesk/copyrenew.html>. I have some reservations about it. For example, there is no indication of what is included. It appears, for example, that only the books volumes and not the periodical volumes were included, but I can't be sure. There is also no indication of quality control. It also has a search engine that is difficult to use. Nevertheless, I sometimes use it as a quick check. If an article is included in the database, then I conclude that the title is likely still copryighted. If I can't find an article or book, I don't assume it is in the public domain, but instead pursue the research path above.