Frequently Asked Questions: General

Records for works submitted since 1978 can be found in the Copyright Office database of registrations at https://cocatalog.loc.gov.  Works registered prior to 1978 are listed in the card catalog in the Copyright Office, and in the published Catalog of Copyright Entries at other major libraries. The Copyright Office has digitized the 661 volumes of the catalog, and these are now available online at http://archive.org/details/copyrightrecords/ External. Works registered between 1870 and 1891 are listed in the card catalog in the Copyright Office.  A test version of the Copyright Office Virtual Card Catalog can be found at https://www.copyright.gov/vcc/ .

Information about copyright records prior to 1870 can be found at . http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/067.html .

For additional details, see Copyright Office circular #23 https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ23.pdf "The Copyright Card Catalog and the Online Files of the Copyright Office."

Published works registered with the Copyright Office are made available for inclusion in the Library of Congress collections. Those not selected are kept by the Copyright Office for a limited time (a few years) and then exchanged or discarded.  Unpublished works are kept for the term of the copyright, but it is expected that published works will be available elsewhere.