Top 1000 collection list and suggestion
I found this list recently: TECH BIT: Top 1000 Most Widely Held Library Books OCLC Research, a division of the international Online Computer Library Center, has compiled a list of the top 1000 titles owned by its 50,000+ member libraries. View the top 10 (which includes the Bible, Mother Goose, and The Lord of the Rings) or all 1000 titles online. http://www.oclc.org/research/top1000/ http://www.oclc.org/research/top1000/complete.htm An annotated version of this list with two extra pieces of data would make an interesting Project Gutenberg web page. I would like to see a link to the Gutenberg edition and the date the item went into or will go into the public domain. I think some people will start to see the negative aspect of the long copyright times at the same time discovering how many documents are available from the Project. I am not currently on the mail list, so you may have already discussed this list. Cheers, -- Steve Herber herber@thing.com work: 206-221-7262 Security Engineer, UW Medicine, IT Services home: 425-454-2399
I finally managed to shlump my books from my old home in the jungle near the Mekong back to Bangkok and found an old copy of William Carlos Williams' Spring and All which was first published in 1923. Is the cutoff date in the States the end of 1923 or *before* 1923? WCW's Kora in Hell came out in 1920 so this is certainly clear. But I would love to get Spring and All out to the world. The pure products of America go crazy -- was a big influence on and a precursor to Ginsberg's Howl and the Beat poets in general. Spring and All was also an important starting point for the Black Mountain poets (Charles Olson, Robert Creely and Robert Duncan). Spring and All completely blew me away. I read the opening and was completely hooked: If anything of moment results -- so much the better. And so much the more likely will it be no will want to see it. There is a constant barrier between the reader and his conciousness of immediate contact with the world. If there is an ocean it is here. Or rather the whole world is in between: Yesterday, tomorrow, Europe, Asia, Africa, -- all things removed and impossible, the tower of the church at Seville, the Parthenon. It would be wonderful to help old Doc Williams to blow away a new generation of aspiring poets. If the book is clear I'll begin work.... Cheers, b/ -- Brad Collins <brad@chenla.org>, Bangkok, Thailand
Asking on this list about copyright clearance for a particular item will only get you speculation in result. The only way to really know if the book you have in mind can be copyright cleared by PG is to go ahead and send in the tp&v and see what the results are. That said, I'm afraid this title does not look like it stands too good a chance. Anything published _before_ 1923 can almost certainly be cleared by PG. Anything published after 1922 will present much more of a problem, and give that Williams seems to be highly regarded as a poet, it's exceedingly likely that copyright was renewed on his titles. It appears that WIlliams' dates were (1883-1963) which means that his writings would not be PD in a life+50 country either... Andrew On Sat, 15 Jan 2005, Brad Collins wrote:
I finally managed to shlump my books from my old home in the jungle near the Mekong back to Bangkok and found an old copy of William Carlos Williams' Spring and All which was first published in 1923.
Is the cutoff date in the States the end of 1923 or *before* 1923?
WCW's Kora in Hell came out in 1920 so this is certainly clear. But I would love to get Spring and All out to the world.
The pure products of America go crazy --
was a big influence on and a precursor to Ginsberg's Howl and the Beat poets in general. Spring and All was also an important starting point for the Black Mountain poets (Charles Olson, Robert Creely and Robert Duncan).
Spring and All completely blew me away. I read the opening and was completely hooked:
If anything of moment results -- so much the better. And so much the more likely will it be no will want to see it.
There is a constant barrier between the reader and his conciousness of immediate contact with the world. If there is an ocean it is here. Or rather the whole world is in between: Yesterday, tomorrow, Europe, Asia, Africa, -- all things removed and impossible, the tower of the church at Seville, the Parthenon.
It would be wonderful to help old Doc Williams to blow away a new generation of aspiring poets.
If the book is clear I'll begin work....
Cheers,
b/
I did a brief gander at the New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors, and it lists Spring and All as first published in 1922. If you can verify this, it will probably clear. Also, it might be worth your while to establish non-renewal, if you really wanted to get this particular book out. Despite WCW's reputation, I noted that the NGC listed 'The Great American Novel' among books pulished in 1923 that did not have their copyright renewed. This isn't particularly surprising. I've found Pulitzer prize winning novelists who didn't bother to renew their copyrights on their early work. -- RS
On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 01:02:13PM +0700, Brad Collins wrote:
I finally managed to shlump my books from my old home in the jungle near the Mekong back to Bangkok and found an old copy of William Carlos Williams' Spring and All which was first published in 1923.
Is the cutoff date in the States the end of 1923 or *before* 1923?
Before 1923. Through the end of 1922. -- Greg
participants (5)
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Andrew Sly -
Brad Collins -
Greg Newby -
Robert Shimmin -
Steve Herber