How does one do a copyright holder search?

[womzilla]

I'm pretty sure there's someone on my flist who knows the answer to this.

Let's say that I'm interested in doing an adaptation of a novel into another medium. The original author is dead and the book is out of print.

How would I go about finding the person who currently owns the copyright? If the work was written before 1977, how can I determine that the work was properly copyrighted at all?

Comments

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html