Talk:Copyright Catalog

Quote

 * "Since 1978, all United States copyright registrations and renewals have been published online at the Copyright Office website. Prior to 1978, copyright registrations and renewals were published in semi-annual softcover catalogs."

This statement can't possibly be true as the year 1978 is well before the WWW (and DNS for that matter) existed.

I don't have access to the reference to ensure a confirm the citation, but I suspect the sentence just needs be reworded, for example to start:

"Details of all United States copyright registrations and renewals since 1978 have been published online at..."

81.86.27.193 (talk) 21:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyright categories section should be updated
The Copyright categories section should be updated. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 14:03, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation guide
The http://cocatalog.loc.gov website seems like an amazing resource for citing the existence of episode titles. However while I am able to find results in the database pretty easily, the URLs produced in doing so are very long and ugly-looking.

In the interest of citing them with brevity which others could easily duplicate I am wondering if we have an easy way to produce a unique URL to the required page with the shortest URL possible.

I imagine that would be done on the basis of a code rather than a title search. For example I recently checked the cite for "The First Five", a Kung Fu Panda episode. If I search for "first five" I get this URL:
 * http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=the+first+five&Search_Code=TALL&PID=tQl3mBU3VhkpU3TAy87ZW4EnLF&SEQ=20160208061918&CNT=25&HIST=1

It produces a list so relying on the SearchArg= parameter does not seem to be ideal. The SEQ= parameter just seems to reflect the date I performed the search, basically useless for citation purposes. I am also not sure what Search_Code=TALL or CNT=25 or HIST=1 represent but they do not seem useful.

Now if I click the top desired result here is what I get...


 * http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=1&ti=1,1&Search%5FArg=the%20first%20five&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=qYyGK7a191b9_zFLyTbM1S-dFOL&SEQ=20160208062413&SID=1

The PID= string changed although I am not sure what that reflects. What I do notice on this page though is a unique identifier:
 * Registration Number / Date: PAu003716234 / 2013-11-07

It would seem like knowing the RN would be adequate, and indeed if I search directly for it (you have to select the reg number field in the dropdown menu instead of the default 'title') we get this URL...
 * http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=PAu003716234&Search_Code=REGS&PID=ESRWjWobknnfsp0gaqdU_2hiCCW&SEQ=20160208062901&CNT=25&HIST=1

So it seems that Search_Arg reflects what you type in, but Search_Code changed from TALL (title all?) to REGS. The PID and SEQ and CNT and HIST fields are all there though...

I experimented and was able to remove the last three and still have it function:
 * http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=PAu003716234&Search_Code=REGS&PID=ESRWjWobknnfsp0gaqdU_2hiCCW

Removing the PID field caused it to fail though. So I think if we made some kind of citation template it would require both the registration number and this PID. I figure someone has probable done this I am just not sure what the template would be called. 184.145.18.50 (talk) 11:33, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Online archives of pre-1978?
The impression given here is in order to verify the copyright status of a work pre-1978 one either has to locate a printed catalog, or rely on a third party such as a library or archive.org to have scanned the earlier books. But for 1978 onwards, there's a website. Is there a reason why there isn't a complete online database? I don't know if this is out of the purview of this article, but if it's due to budgets or something, it might be worth answering the question. 23skidoo (talk) 16:30, 3 November 2022 (UTC)