Category Archives: serials

Support the IMLS

If you’ve found useful the many mid-20th century serials that are now freely readable online through The Online Books Page, you can thank the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The IMLS (as it’s generally known) funded the completion in … Continue reading

Posted in copyright, libraries, preservation, serials | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Milestones for the Deep Backfile project

Back in 2020 and 2021, while the Penn Libraries were largely closed, many of our librarians worked from home on the Deep Backfile project that I’ve written about here before. Faced with more demand than ever for online access to … Continue reading

Posted in copyright, libraries, serials, sharing | 1 Comment

Free the sources!

I gave a lightning talk this past Sunday when Mary and I attended Wikipedia Day at the Columbia School of Journalism. Below is approximately what I said, with links to websites I showed during the talk, and few footnotes. Our thanks to … Continue reading

Posted in citizen librarians, open access, publicdomain, serials, wikipedia | Comments Off on Free the sources!

2020 vision #1: Opportunity

In just thirty days from when this post appears, a new crop of works will join the public domain. Exactly what will come out of copyright will vary by country.  In Europe and other places with “life+70 years” copyright terms, … Continue reading

Posted in publicdomain, serials | Comments Off on 2020 vision #1: Opportunity

Wikipedia and the deep backfile

We’re continuing to add serial information to the Deep Backfile project that I announced here last month.  I’m adding some of the existing information in The Online Books Page serials listings and our first serial renewals listings that hadn’t initially … Continue reading

Posted in copyright, libraries, open access, serials, wikipedia | Comments Off on Wikipedia and the deep backfile

Invitation to participate in a new project: Help open journals’ deep backfiles

As I’ve noted here previously, there’s a wealth of serial content published in the 20th century that’s in the public domain, but not yet freely available online, often due to uncertainty about its copyright (and the resulting hesitation to digitize … Continue reading

Posted in citizen librarians, copyright, open access, serials | Comments Off on Invitation to participate in a new project: Help open journals’ deep backfiles

Everybody’s Library Questions: Copyright and advertisements

My previous post answered a reader question about how to determine whether a newspaper (or other serial issue) was under copyright or not.  (More details about the process can be found in our guide “Determining copyright status of serial issues”.)  … Continue reading

Posted in copyright, serials | 2 Comments

Everybody’s Library Questions: Newspaper copyrights, notices, and renewals

Because I blog about  copyrights for serials, I occasionally get questions in comments to my posts about determining what exactly is copyrighted in those serials.  I’ve been slow to answer them in the comments threads, partly because some of them … Continue reading

Posted in copyright, serials | 2 Comments