The public domain. Now available for only $165 an hour!
Figuring out if a work is renewed can be a tricky business. The only official records of renewal are held by the Copyright Office in Washington D.C. However records before January 1, 1978 are not available online. The only way to gain access to these accurate and official records of copyright renewals is to either:
Pay the copyright office $165 an hour to search the copyright records for the original copyright and the renewal notice.
In 2013 should we have to rely on paper card catalogs to help determine if a work is in the public domain? Moreover, Is a work really public domain if it costs $165 an hour to know it’s in the public domain?
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
View all posts by Michael Sauers