The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
Our (newly formed) town historical society had someone bring by a yearbook from 1946, so there's a good possibility that it fell out of copyright in that period when authors had to register to extend their copyright.
As there's no copyright notice on it, I assume that it falls within the public domain per the rules given by Cornell's "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States"
Should we receive something from 1978 or after, or between 1923 and 1963 that has a copyright notice on it, what are the proper procedures that an archive needs to perform to as due dilligance to determine if the copyright was registered or extended, so that we can determine if it has fallen into the public domain (ie, if we can scan it without them gifting the item to us)?
Joe
I'm not sure about the best process for ensuring due diligence, but an invaluable reference is the Digital Copyright Slider, published by Michael Brewer and the ALA Office of Information Technology Policy.