Re: Anonymous poems

Dear list,

These poems have been posted on various educational sites on the Internet, always with the attribution "author unknown." They appear to be modern-- say within the last 20 years, so they wouldn't have passed into the public domain.

Jane la Plante
Access Services Librarian
Gordon B. Olson Library
Minot State University
Minot, North Dakota 58707
Voice: (701) 858-3857
FAX: (701) 858-3581
E-Mail: laplante[_at_]warp6.cs.misu.nodak.edu

On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, Stephen Fishman wrote:

>
> --- Jane laPlante <laplante[_at_]warp6.cs.misu.nodak.edu>
> wrote:
> > Dear listmembers,
> >
> > I am a librarian working with a professor who wants
> > to include two
> > anonymous poems in a book he is writing. His
> > publisher edited the poems
> > out of his text because he doesn't have copyright
> > permission to use
> > them. So far I have been unsuccessful in tracking
> > down the authorship of
> > these doggerel style poems. My question for the
> > list is: If a work is
> > anonymous and hasn't been published, and a concerted
> > effort has been made
> > to determine ownership, how great a risk would it be
> > to reprint it in a
> > published book?
> >
>
> Do you have any idea how old the poems are? If they
> were created over 120 years ago, they are in the
> public domain in the U.S. Anonymous works receive a
> copyright term of 95 years from the date of first
> publication or 12 from the date of creation, whichever
> comes first.
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
Received on Wed Sep 25 2002 - 15:51:05 GMT