IMSLP Forums

I found a couple old LDS children song books in my grandma's collection:

* The Primary Song Book : Including Marches and Voluntaries
Salt Lake City, Utah : General Board of the Primary Association, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1939.

* The Children Sing
Salt Lake City : Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1951.

I did a search for "The Children Sing" at http://www.copyright.gov/records/ and turned up nothing. Am I right assuming it is public domain?

To find out if the first is public domain would I have to search the records in person or pay someone? (I'm betting it wasn't renewed either)

Thanks.

You're right on the 1951 publication, though you might wish to search under all possible parameters: publisher name, editor of collection, etc. just to make sure. Also check for the presence of a copyright notice - in the correct form ("Copyright", "Copr.", or "©"; [year of first publication]; [Claimant name]). It has to appear on the fist page of music or on the title page, or both to be a valid notice.

The 1939 book is problematic because there's no convenient online way to check the renewal status. Works published between 1923 and 1950 can only be searched via the actual physical card catalog at the Copyright Office or by consulting the volumes entitled Catalog of Copyright Entries (published by the Copyright Office) which are available at selected public libraries.

One of our long-term objectives here is to acquire and scan the music and pertinent renewal volumes of the Catalog of Copyright Entries to ease the search process for 1923-1950 publications somewhat.

It looks like most people working on scanning the "Catalog of Copyright Entries" skip over the performing arts sections (that I've found):

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/
http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrig ... rward=home
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ccer/ccer.htm

Oh well.

I recall some communication with a person connected to that project a few years ago. I think they actually had access to the music volumes but no volunteers to deal with them.