Digitization and Public Access

Copyright Matters: Digitization and Public Access is a new blog from the U.S. Office of Copyright and the Library of Congress. The first post is an article by Maria A. Pallante, the Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, entitled Public Access to Historical Records. The posts discusses the efforts by the Office of Copyright to digitized its 70 million records. To date nearly 13 million index cards from Copyright Office's card catalog and over half of the 660 volume Catalog of Copyright Entries have been scanned.  The scanned images are being processed through quality assurance and then moved to long-term managed storage.

There are five major sets of documents which are the subject of the digitization as set forth on the Project website, 

• Copyright Record Books containing the early records of copyright ownership
• Application forms in bound volumes also referred to as Copyright Record Books
• Historical Copyright Card Catalog
• Published Catalogs of Copyright Entries (CCE's)
• Copies of recorded documents pertaining to copyright ownership

Oh, no! you are saying.  Not another gigantic database to look at! Yes, it is true, but think, it is ONLY 70 million more records.