What do all of the following works have in common?
The first two volumes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (his own translation/adaptation of the original version in French, En attendant Godot, published in 1952)
Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim
Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!
Pauline Réage’s Histoire d’O
Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, subtitled “The influence of comic books on today’s youth"
Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Mac Hyman’s No Time for Sergeants
Alan Le May’s The Searchers< /li>
C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy, the fifth volume of The Chronicles of Narnia
Alice B. Toklas’ The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
Give up? All of these works, and more, would have gone into the public domain on 1 January 2011 had not the Copyright Act of 1976 been passed. For the full story and more examples check out the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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