From DCL:
DCL (Digital Conversion Lab) and The New York Public Library have completed the initial phase of a project to digitize and organize historical records of the United States Copyright Office, making those records searchable and increasingly accessible.
The first phase of the project—which supports the Library’s mission to make information accessible to all—calls for the digitization and structure of hundreds of thousands of pages of mid-20th Century Federal copyright records spanning the time period between 1923 to 1964. Later phases will make this data accessible to all members of the public via a web-based platform, transforming the laborious, manual process of searching copyright records into a much simpler task.
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Extracting data from the copyright records is of vital importance to the public and to the copyright industries that make up a significant part of the U.S. economy,” explains Sean Redmond, Senior Product Manager at NYPL. “Creating a searchable and accessible database also benefits the scholarly community interested in various aspects of the creation, production, and ownership of creative works.”
Read the Complete Announcement