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

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

To find whether a 1923-1977 copyright was renewed, try this search (http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~lesk/copyrenew.html) of the 1950-1977 renewal notices digitized for Project Gutenberg.

1978 and later copyright records are searchable at the Copyright Office Web page (http://www.copyright.gov/records/index.html); a definitive manual search of earlier records is available for a fee.