Comes the Flood:
the Library and Copyright Deposit

31. Books and pamphlets dominated the initial flood of copyright deposits triggered by the 1870 law, but maps, music, prints, engravings, and photographs were included and increasingly important. As demonstrated in this photograph, throughout the twentieth century, both the kinds of items eligible for copyright protection and the creativity of those producing such items surged.

The US copyright system became a primary source of acquisitions for the Library of Congress in 1870, when Librarian Ainsworth Rand Spofford successfully advocated for the Library to be the center for copyright registration and deposit. The concept of copyright deposit for library use was fundamental to Spofford’s argument that the Library of Congress not only served Congress, but was also the national library of the United States. Moreover, it was the most practical method of acquiring a comprehensive collection of American publications. In fact, it started a deluge that continues to this day.

The US Constitution gave Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Congress enacted the first federal copyright law in May 1790, specifying that the US Courts handle copyright registration. The first work was registered within two weeks: John Barry’s The Philadelphia Spelling Book, in the US District of Court of Pennsylvania. Barry received copyright protection, or the right to print, reprint, publish, or vend his work, for a term of 14 years, renewable for another 14. The original copyright act also required a single copy of each registered work to be delivered within six months to the US Secretary of State.

When the Smithsonian Institution was established in 1846, Congress included a copyright deposit provision authorizing the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress each to receive a copy of every work copyrighted for use. However, the law did not provide for enforcement, and the lack of compliance eventually led Spofford, who became Librarian in 1864, to seek new and stronger legislation that would transfer all copyright business solely to the Library.

On April 9, 1870, he wrote a persuasive 1,600-word letter to Representative Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island, the chairman of the Patent Committee, outlining “some leading reasons why the transfer of the entire copyright business and books to the Library of Congress would promote the public interest.” Jenckes agreed, so did Congress, and President Ulysses S. Grant approved the act on July 8, 1870. The new law centralized both the registration and deposit of two copies of each work—one copy for legal record and one for library use. The Librarian of Congress was named as the responsible official—in effect, the first register of copyright. The US law is unusual; similar statutes in other nations do not combine copyright protection with registration and deposit.

Spofford’s success unleashed a flood of material. For the next 26 years, the relatively small Library staff was increasingly preoccupied with copyright matters. In 1874, for the first time, the copyright law brought in more books than were obtained that year through purchase; by 1880 the number of deposits had doubled. Storage space throughout the Capitol was found as Spofford continued to plead with Congress for authorization for a separate Library building. Construction of the building did not begin until 1888, and by 1896, the year before it was occupied, the administration of the copyright law required more than three-fourths of Spofford’s time and the undivided attention of 26 of the Library’s 42 employees.

In spite of the overcrowded conditions in the Library, Spofford always placed great value on the comprehensiveness of the collections brought in by copyright, strongly believing that “what is pronounced trash today may have unexpected value hereafter, and the unconsidered trifles of the press of the nineteenth century may prove highly curious and interesting to the twentieth.” He never ceased defending the Library against charges that it was filling up with “trash” brought in by the wide net of the law, asserting that “every nation should have, at its capital city, all the books that its authors have produced, in perpetual evidence of its literary history and progress—or retrogression, as the case may be.” He carefully ensured the complete representation in the Library of all editions of works from authors well known in his day, frequently querying established writers directly concerning the dates of new or revised editions of their works.

In 1897, when the Library finally moved from its crowded rooms in the Capitol into its spacious new building, nearly 40 percent of the approximately 800,000 items in the collection had been acquired through copyright. With the move came a long-awaited administrative reorganization. Separate map, music, graphic arts, and copyright departments were established. Thorvald Solberg, who had worked at the Library from 1876 to 1889 and was by then a nationally known copyright authority, was appointed the first official Register of Copyrights. The creation of a separate copyright department in the Library of Congress officially recognized, for the first time, the value of the copyright function to the national library.

Through the years, because of the widening diversity of formats in materials eligible for copyright, the deposit provision has turned out to be more important than Spofford could have ever imagined. Maps, music, prints, engravings, and photographs were included in the 1865 and 1870 laws. Subsequent changes of copyright laws and regulations have included motion pictures (1912); choreography, in the form of dance motion (1952), which stimulated the deposit of television scripts; sound recordings (1972); computer programs (1980); architectural works (1990); works in CD-ROM format; and electronic works published in the United States and available online only (2010).