The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and the Reading University Library have created Firms Out of Business (FOB), an online database containing the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for out-of-business printing and publishing firms, magazines, literary agencies and similar organizations that have archives housed in libraries and archives in North America and the United Kingdom.
FOB is a companion project to the Writers, Artists and Their Copyright Holders (WATCH), an online database containing the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for authors and artists. The WATCH file is accessible at http://www.watch-file.com.
The objective of both projects is to provide information to scholars and researchers about whom to contact for permission to publish text and images that have copyright protection.
FOB entries are researched from standard reference books, university library and archival catalogs and discussions with library colleagues and other experts in the field. The entries are designed as factual summaries, not as short company histories.
Two categories are represented in FOB. The first category includes firms that went out of existence long ago and no longer hold publishing rights. The other category comprises firms that have gone out of business more recently, and directs inquirers who may have an interest in rights that could belong to that firm or its successor.
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