Materials featured on African American Studies at Beinecke Library may be protected by copyright restrictions; permission to publish should be sought from the owners of the rights, typically the creator or the heirs to his or her estate. Two websites may be very helpful to researchers who are tracing copyright holders:

WATCH File: The WATCH File (Writers, Artists, and Their Copyright Holders) is a database containing primarily the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for authors and artists whose archives are housed, in whole or in part, in libraries and archives in North America and the United Kingdom. WATCH is a joint project of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Reading Library, Reading, England.

U.S. Copyright Office: Includes all the information you need to know to comply with copyright law. A searchable database of records can help you determine if a work is protected by copyright.

More information about copyright and Beinecke Library collections: Permissions & Copyright.