Copyright Slider: Quick Easy Access to Copyright Laws and Guidelines

Thanks to Digitization 101’s post I learned about the Copyright Slider. A creation of the ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) – you can find more official information over on ALA’s Washington Office blog (Let the OITP Copyright Slider Answer Your Questions!) and order one of your own for only a bit more than $5 (less if you order in bulk).

The Copyright Slider lets you answer questions such as (quoting the post linked to above):

• Is a work in the public domain?
• Do you need permission to use it?
• When does copyright expire?

Here is their example of how it might be used:

A library in rural Pennsylvania is digitizing its local historical collection on the copper mining industry in the region. One of the collection texts, Memoirs of a Copper Miner, was published in 1953 and is still protected by copyright. Or is it? Align the black arrow on the slide-chart to materials published between 1923 and 1963 and discover that works originally published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright symbol are in the public domain! Memoirs of a Copper Miner was published in 1953 and does not have a copyright symbol. Let the digitizing begin!

This looks like a dandy little tool to have in your desk drawer and I plan to order one sometime soon.

My next question is how hard would it be to make a slick flash version of this that could live online and be updated as copyright rules change?

Image Credit: A cropped version of a photo from the District Dispatch blog post quoted above.