[pd-discuss] Entering the Public Domain in 2013

Wed Oct 31 18:19:19 UTC 2012

I would be hesitant to rely on an uncredited web site with unsourced information as a source for public domain information - especially when the consequences in the US of making a mistake can be so dire.

Name authority work, including the establishment of author death dates, is one of the most difficult and expensive tasks undertaken by librarians.  It requires careful research given the similarity of names.  It also requires careful citation of the source of data - and even then mistakes are common.  The difficulty is one of the reasons why some cataloging codes dropped the requirement to include death dates in cataloging records unless absolutely required to differentiate names.

Karen Coyle has a nice post on some of the problems associated with doing name authority work at http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2007/09/name-authority-control-aka-name.html.  Her examples focus on birth dates, but the same would hold true for death dates.  

Peter B. Hirtle, FSAA   
Senior Policy Advisor 
Digital Scholarship & Preservation Services 
Cornell University Library
2B53 Kroch Library                              
Ithaca, NY  14853
peter.hirtle at cornell.edu
t.  607.255-4033 
f.  607.255-9524
http://vivo.cornell.edu/individual/vivo/individual23436
Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums:
http://hdl.handle.net/1813/14142

-----Original Message-----
From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Philip Harper
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 2:00 PM
To: Public Domain discuss list
Subject: Re: [pd-discuss] Entering the Public Domain in 2013

Dear Sam, Jonathan et al,

In your message dated Mon, 29 Oct 2012, you wrote:
>    Like most years we want to get together a list of interesting 
>    figures whose work will be entering the public domain next year 
>    (2013).

I think, at least for authors, your query is best fulfilled by the pages indexed here:
   http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/abyod/abyod.htm

Or you can use the second section of:
   http://www.authorandbookinfo.com
to get the same information in a different way, and with the option to specify the sex of the authors returned, and to omit the older authors whose dates of death are not in the database (yet).

Best wishes,

Phil Harper

-- 

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