IMSLP Forums

I've run into some copyright difficulty with respect to librettists. The composers being uploaded to IMSLP are usually fairly prominent artists, so their biographical information is easy to find. However, in their songs they sometimes use authors who are more obscure.

I was recently politely chastised (thanks for keeping me honest, Carolus ) for uploading First Waltz by Tosti, whose librettist died in 1970. This was carelessness on my part. Had I bothered to do a Google search, I could have found this fairly easily. However, some librettists' information isn't so readily available. Are there any online resources I should be aware of when checking this information? Or is Google the best resource for this? If I'm unable to find biographical information via Google, should I just ask here in the forums?

WorldCat might also be good, although to be honest, I find them a bit lacking in birthdates for editors, and sometimes even composers.

IMSLP actually has a page detailing the recommended online resources for this sort of thing: http://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Composer_Names
The overall topic of the page is how composer names are determined, but there is a rather lengthy section (the first one) that describes the sources that are commonly used. Note that a web search and WorldCat are the two last things that probably should be resorted to WorldCat is in general most useful for establishing floruit dates when necessary, and also sometimes for obtaining the full form of someone's name when it isn't available elsewhere.

Oh, quite good. Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.