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IV. 1909 — present
Whereas the 1870 law represented a change in administrative procedure rather than in definition of the term of copyright, the act of 4 March 1909 (35 Stat. 1075, effective 1 July 1909) made fundamental changes in the procedures required for securing copyright, the first such changes since the original law of 1790. From 1790 to 1909, the term of copyright had dated from the deposit of a printed title page prior to publication, in order to protect a work during the course of publication; the 1909 statute eliminated entirely the necessity of registering title pages in advance of publication and designated the term of copyright to begin with the date of publication. (The term was still 28 years, but renewable for another 28, rather than 14 — without inserting a notice in a newspaper.) Henceforth the "copyright date," by legal definition, was to be synonymous with the publication date; and as a result bibliographers have at their fingertips, in the copyright records and the published Catalogue, the official publication dates of all copyrighted works for which registration has been made in the United States since the middle of 1909. To be sure, the actual publication date (or date of release to the general public) may in some cases be different; but deciding what constitutes an "actual publication date" is an arbitrary matter anyway, and the fact remains that the date in the copyright records is the one reported by the publisher (or author, or whoever was the copyright proprietor) as the publication date (and therefore the date on which he wished his copyright protection to begin). So, in the post-1909 records, there are no title registration dates and no collection of title pages, but only the dates of publication — and, as before, the dates of deposit of two copies, important for the bibliographer as proof that physical copies of the books existed on those dates.
The other most important feature of the 1909 law, from the bibliographer's point of view, has to do with the requirement of American manufacture, initiated in the 1891 act. Whatever its merits (or demerits) from other points of view, it became a great boon to the bibliographer in 1909, for the new statute required, as part of each application for copyright, an affidavit giving the names of the printer and binder and the date of the completion of printing. Since the printer was not obliged, as in England, to place his name on the printed matter itself,[34] this manufacturing information for American books is
One other provision of the 1909 law will serve to suggest the bibliographical usefulness of twentieth-century American copyright records even for students of English and foreign literatures. Sections 21 and 22 of the act provided for "ad interim copyrights" of works in the English language first published abroad. Depositing one copy of any such work in the Copyright Office within thirty days after publication would secure to the author (or proprietor) an American copyright to last for a period of thirty days; if during that period the author (or proprietor) arranged to have an American edition of the work printed and deposited, he could secure a regular 28-year copyright. Although the lengths of these periods have varied in the years since 1909, the application for an ad interim copyright has always necessitated a statement of the original date of publication of the foreign edition; the ad interim record books (which begin with 16 July 1909) therefore contain the English publication dates of a great many works of twentieth-century English literature. The works entered naturally represent only an erratic sampling of all English books published (amounting to something more than 29,000 entries by the end of 1945); but for the works included, this source of information about publication dates is frequently a more convenient and accessible one than any which exists in England. From the ad interim record books one can learn that Norman Douglas's South Wind was published on 5 June 1917 and D. H. Lawrence's Pansies on 4 July 1929, facts which are not recorded in the standard Soho bibliographies of these authors. A similar statutory
The copyright records for the post-1909 period are not strikingly different from those for the preceding period, except for the kinds of dates they include, but certain points about them are worth noting:
(1) Record Books and Card Indexes. During the years from 1870 to 1909 both the record books and the card indexes contained information that had been transcribed from the claimants' original applications (which were then tied into bundles and are now stored in Alexandria). From 1909 on, the actual application forms were brought together to constitute these records, first as the card index and later as the record books. On 1 July 1909 a card form of application was introduced; each card (for books), when folded once, was the size of the proprietor cards which had been filed since 1898 and could be interfiled with them. These card applications continued in use for books until early March 1948 (for other classes the date varied between 1946 and 1948); they were filed alphabetically by claimants through 6 November 1937 and by registration number thereafter. Thus between 1909 and 1937 the claimant cards in the card index are the actual applications, not transcriptions of them; between 1937 and 1946 the card index may be used to supply registration numbers, which are then checked in the separate application card file. The publication date, the date of receipt of deposit copies, the date of the affidavit of American manufacture, and the XXc registration number are visible on each card without unfolding it; to learn the names of the printer and binder and the date of completion of printing, one must unfold the card (which of course necessitates pulling the rod from the card drawer). The record books for this period are correspondingly less useful, for three reasons: the entries in them are arranged by registration number, so that one must first ascertain the number in the card index anyway (or in the published catalogue); they contain no information not on the application cards (except, in some cases, that taken from the book itself); they are transcriptions, not original documents. From 1909 to late 1940 (for books) these
Beginning with May 1946 (for books) a new page form of application came into use (although the old card form continued to be accepted until early 1948, so that original applications for book registrations during these years may be found either in the application card file or in the record books). The new applications were simply bound together in registration number sequence (thus in the approximate order of receipt) to constitute the record books. But after May 1946 the relationship between the record books and the card indexes is reversed, since the cards for the card indexes again became transcriptions of information contained in both the works and the applications. One must use the card index (or published catalogues) to ascertain the registration number; but if one wishes to check the application itself, one must look up the number in the record books. Though all the record books are official documents and the published catalogues prima facie evidence of the information they contain (by the law of 1909), historical scholars are always alert to the possibility of mistranscription and will find 1946 and 1948 the most important dates to remember in using the records, since that two-year period forms the dividing line between original applications as cards in drawers and original applications as pages in record books.[35]
In addition to these basic indexes and record books, the Copyright Office contains a number of other files and records, some of which should be mentioned for their potential bibliographical usefulness. (a) The assignment card indexes, with entries under assignor, assignee, and (from 1927) titles, serve as a guide to the series of assignment record books; both the indexes and the record books provide information about the transfer of titles and are an essential source for publishing history and for author-bibliographies that take later editions and impressions into account. (b) The renewal record books (a separate series after 1909, with their own XXc numbers) are indexed (by claimants, authors, and some titles) in separate card indexes between 1909 and 1937, and in the general card indexes thereafter; whenever a renewal card for a given book is not present, one should check the original registration number in the appropriate record book, for the
(2) Deposit Copies. Because of limitations of space, the Copyright Office in the twentieth century has employed the policy of keeping deposits only for a limited time (normally three or five years) and then transferring them to the Library of Congress for disposal, with the result that there is no complete set of copyright deposits in existence. The only exceptions are certain categories of unpublished materials, particularly music and drama; since unpublished typescripts of plays are accepted for copyright, it was felt that all the typescripts should be retained. These plays, dating from the creation of Class D in 1901, are now housed in the Library of Congress (where they form a largely untapped body of material for the history of American drama and a substantially neglected source of unpublished titles for bibliographies of American dramatists).[36] The general policy of disposing of deposits was changed in 1959, however, and from that date forward single copies of deposits were to be kept by the Copyright Office as a permanent record (except those that were transferred to the stacks of the Library of Congress). The only deposits, therefore, which are available for examination in the Copyright Office are those from 1959 to the present (they can be recalled, upon request, from storage in Alexandria).
The point of interest in this situation is the whereabouts of the earlier deposit copies. Even though a deposit copy may not always
(3) Published Records. The published Catalogue of Copyright Entries (spelled "Catalog" as of 1934) extends throughout this period, and the entire copyright record is available in any good research library. Before 1909 part of the record was excluded from the printed version, since only deposited works were included and not registered titles for which no completed works had been deposited. After 1909, when title registrations were abolished, the record of deposits became at the same time a complete record of copyright entries. It is as simple a matter to look up the publication date, deposit date, or affidavit date for any work copyrighted in the United States since 1909 in the CCE as it is to look the work up in the CBI or the Library of Congress catalogue or any other standard source; why the CCE is used so infrequently by bibliographers is a mystery. From a bibliographical point of view, the only weakness of the CCE is that it does not include the names of the printer and binder of each book, nor the date of completion of printing; this information can be found only in the applications filed in the Copyright Office. Everything else is found in the printed record, including the claimant's name and the registration number.
In the second series of CCE (1906-46), bibliographers will generally need to refer only to Part I (Books) and Part II (Periodicals). Beginning with 1909, however, pamphlet and dramatic material was designated as Group 2 of Part I, listed in separate volumes with separate annual indexes; since some works could be classified either way, it is generally wise to check the annual indexes for both Groups 1 and 2. A Group 3, for dramatic compositions, was added in 1928; again, published drama could appear in Groups 1, 2, or 3, and all are worth checking. The annual indexes, by claimant and author, are excellent through 1938, but from 1939 through 1946 they contain only the names of authors, not of claimants, making the CCE less useful during this period for work on publishing history.[39] The war also necessitated certain abbreviations in the scope of each entry: from 1938 through 1945 some of the information available on Library of Congress cards (such as the total pagination) was eliminated, and from 1940 through 1946 the publication date alone (and not the deposit date) was given. In the third series of CCE (1947- ), bibliographers may be interested in Parts 1A (Books), 1B (Pamphlets and Contributions to Periodicals), 2 (Periodicals), 3/4 (Drama and Works for Oral Delivery), and possibly 5 (Music) and 6 (Maps and
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