New General Catalog of Old Books & Authors - The aim of this site is to catalog all deceased authors, and all authors of books published before 1964, including their full name(s), date of death, date of birth, pseudonyms, sex & nationality (for non-EU citizens who died after c1920), and their books published before 1964. The purpose of this site is: 1) by cataloging the dates of death of authors, to enable the determination of the expiry of their copyright where a “life + x years” rule applies. Where the date of death is unavailable, the date of birth or date of their first publication can be used to set an upper limit to the duration of copyright – see my Authors by Year of Death webpages to see whose copyright expires each year in the near future, 2) by cataloging the dates of publication of books, to enable the determination of the expiry of their copyright where a “publication + x years” rule applies. In the US, for works published from 1923 thru 1963 the copyright status also depends on whether the initial copyright was renewed – see my Catalog of Copyright Entries (Renewals) webpages for guidance on this, and 3) to identify those books already available on the Internet, to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort by “electronic republishers”. This is a mammoth project, and is only partially complete. The online webpages here currently catalog 85 000 authors out of what is estimate to be at least 300 000 deceased authors, and over 135 000 (20 000 online) out of what is estimated to be at least 2 000 000 books published before 1964. This will be added to Academic Resources 2005 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.