Dear Robert (and list), I am concerned about the manner in which you have ascertained that there is no copyright on Mr. Hagy's work. Did you inquire with the author? Check with the university where the thesis was written? Check out UMI (University Microfilms International)? Check with the library that published his work before you to find out how they acquired permission to copy the book? Just in case you do not know, there does not have to be a copyright notice inside a thesis in order for it to be copyrighted. I own two thesis copyrights for my own work; my dissertation (Ph.D.) and thesis (M.A.) are copyrighted. I, like most other academics, have given permission to University Microfilms International (a Bell & Howell Company) to reproduce my dissertation. Most theses are not included in UMI's inventory, but some are (mine is not). If Mr. (Dr.?) Hagy's work is included in the UMI inventory, unbound copies of materials held by UMI can be purchased by contacting http://wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/search. I believe the cost for unbound copies shipped express is $31.00. Bound copies can be purchased through that site as well, but you cannot use the express delivery and I do not know how much a bound copy would cost. If Mr. Hagy's work is included in UMI's inventory, getting copies without violating his copyright would be simple. If his work is not held in the UMI collection, then you need to contact the author for permission to copy his material. There is a James W. Hagy who has several volumes of materials available through http://www.genealogybookshop.com. It would seem likely that this is the same author as the one who wrote the thesis you intend to copy since the works are of a like kind to the one you described. You might be able to learn how to contact him through the genealogy bookshop. You might also be able to contact him through his alma mater, East Tennessee State University. It seems that he might have been included as an author in one of South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV) Commission's programs (see http://www.scetv.org) called The Writers' Circle of South Carolina, Season IV. You could also contact them to see if you could find out how to reach the Joseph W. Hagy they featured in their program. Their e-mail address is: <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]"> [email protected]</A> I found this listing on a 1993 seminar held at Temple University: James W. Hagy, Department of History, University of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424 (USA), If this is your James W. Hagy, you could try to reach him through the history department at the University of Charleston. In any event, I simply want to point out to you that unless you have ascertained from an authoritative source such as from the author himself or the publishers of his work (e.g., East Tennessee University, the Russell County Historical Society, etc.) that the book you are offering to copy for people has definitely entered the public domain, you need to do more than simply look inside the first few pages of a thesis to see if the person has typed in a copyright statement into the text. Under U.S. law, the fact that an author wrote the material guarantees him/her the copyright to the material unless he signs it over to someone else such as a publisher. This is true whether he or she wrote on the material that it is copyrighted. If you copy Mr. Hagy's work and it has not become part of the public domain, you are breaking the law. More important, you are depriving Mr. Hagy of the right to make an income on his work. I hope you will make absolutely certain that you have the right to copy the entirety of his work before you begin to reproduce this work for others. Dr. Karen Carter Sandy, UT