Thank you Stanford!

Stanford University unveils an online copyright renewal database. For reasons which are explained in their page about the collection, this makes it much easier for anyone who wishes to reprint books published between 1923 and 1963 to determine whether the book is still under U.S. copyright.

Props also to Project Gutenberg and others who are involved in this and similar projects.

(Found via Paul di Filippo's listserv comment pointing to BoingBoing.)