A Study of the Copyright Renewal Rate for Maps
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/istl49Abstract
This study examines the copyright renewal of maps published in the United States from 1923 to 1950 and compares the results with a recent study of copyright renewals for books. Results indicate that, while the average copyright renewal rate for maps appears similar to that of books, the average was skewed higher by a single publisher whose renewal rate was much higher than average. With the data from that publisher excluded, the average copyright renewal rate dropped to 10% meaning that a significant number of maps copyrighted in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century are probably in the public domain due to lack of copyright renewal.
Downloads
References
Arlitsch, K. 2002. Digitizing Sanborn Fire Insurance MapsTM for a full color, publicly accessible collection. D-Lib Magazine 8(7/8). [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july02/arlitsch/07arlitsch.html.
HathiTrust. 2019. Copyright Review Program. Ann Arbor, MI: HathiTrust. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: https://www.hathitrust.org/copyright-review.
Hirtle, P. 2008. Copyright renewal, copyright restoration, and the difficulty of determining copyright status. D-Lib Magazine 14 (7/8). [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july08/hirtle/07hirtle.html.
Musser, L. 2014. Copyright status for Sanborn maps. base line 35(4): 25-26. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: http://www.ala.org/rt/files/publicationsab/baseline/35-4.pdf#page=25.
Ristow, W. W. 1968. United States fire insurance and underwriters maps, 1852-1968. Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 25(3): 194-218. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951d029745846.
Sanborn Map Company. 2019. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Colorado Springs, CO: Sanborn Map Company. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: https://www.sanborn.com/sanborn-fire-insurance-maps.
Stanford University. 2019. Copyright Renewal Database. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals.
U.S. Copyright Office. 1906-. Catalog of Copyright Entries. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce.
U.S. Copyright Office. 2019. Annual Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Copyright Office. [cited 2019 Dec 6]. Available from: https://www.copyright.gov/history/annual_reports.html.
Wilkin, J. P. 2017. How large is the ‘public domain’? A comparative analysis of Ringer’s 1961 copyright renewal study and HathiTrust CRMS data. College & Research Libraries 78(2): 201-218. DOI: https://www.copyright.gov/history/annual_reports.html.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Linda Musser

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.