Frequently Asked Questions: General

You may have registered your work with the U.S. Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress. While not every work registered with the Copyright Office is acquired for the Library's permanent collection and reflected in the catalog, the registration records for the works submitted for copyright registration are accessible from the Copyright Office's catalogs described below.  If you registered your work with the U.S. Copyright Office, there are a few different places you can search, depending on the date of the registration.

Records for works submitted since 1978 may be found in:

• U.S. Copyright Office’s Public Catalog
• U.S. Copyright Office’s Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) pilot, which features enhanced search and filter capabilities

Records for works submitted prior to 1978 may be found in:

• Card catalog in the U.S. Copyright Office’s Public Records Reading Room
• U.S. Copyright Office’s Virtual Card Catalog
• Internet Archive where the Copyright Office has digitized and made available the 661 volumes of the catalog
• Published Catalog of Copyright Entries at other major libraries

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