Author Dates Finding

From DPCanadaWiki

One of the major problems of the Canadian copyright system (essentially life + 50 years) is that the death date of an author is often unknown. Until such time that a death date can be established, the book simply cannot enter DPC's workflow. It is dangerous to begin any significant amount of CP work before you obtain a copyright clearance from Site Admin.

To establish a DOD (date of death) to PGC's standards, we do not just need a death date, we also need a reference to one or more reliable sources.

A list of "approved" sources of DOD information will be compiled here, in case you want to do your own preliminary research:

• List of Eligible Authors for PGCanada updated regularly
• Collections Canada "Amicus"
• Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Québec
• Library of Congress Authorities
• The New York Times database (and other national newspapers archives)
• Cambridge Bibiography of English Literature
• London Library Online Catalog
• The British Library
• The Internet Archive TIA
• National Archives of the UK
• Dictionary of Ulster Biography
• New General Catlog of Books and Authors (kingkong) - not sufficient alone
• Wikipedia - not sufficient alone

Others will be added: if you have suggestions, please submit them with complete URLs to SA for checkout.

In cases where no death dates can be found, any information that might help establish the copyright status is also welcome, such as birth dates, dates of first publications, dates of last publications, other hints that an author was still alive at a certain time. However, sometimes an author has worked so long ago that it is quite safe to assume he died more than 50 years ago, as is the case with authors who were born more than 160 years ago.

So, when you have a project you want to clear, let Site Admin know title, full author name, year of publication of the edition involved, DOD if known, and, importantly, the same info for any other "significant contributor".

This means illustrator (but if we cannot clear the illustrator, we can omit the illos), translator, secondary author(s)... but NOT editor (unless that's a euphemism for "ghost-writer"), writer of dedication or preface, and certainly not other authors who are quoted incidentally (apply "fair use" rules - short quotes are OK, whole sections or chapters require DOD clearance).