The text of several volumes of this series from the Bodleian and Harvard Libraries are now available online. Er…were available. Before Spring Break, an incomplete run of 23 volumes from the years between 1856 and 1908 were available in Full View. Don’t ask me what happened to these texts; maybe I just dreamt of them.

You can imagine the difficulties dealing with a series that has six formal titles. As listed in OCLC Worldcat, this series has been cataloged as “Collecção das leis do Brazil; 1808-21; Collecção das leis do Imperio do Brazil; 1822-Nov. 14, 1889; Decretos do governo provisorio da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brazil; Nov. 15, 1889-Feb. 13, 1891; Collecção das leis da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brazil; (varies slightly); Feb. 14, 1891-19.”

Nevertheless, in whatever manner these sets are cataloged, every one of the volumes is in the public domain. Under Law 9.610 of February 19, 1998, the most recent Brazilian legislation that fully addresses author rights, the texts of treaties, laws, decrees, regulations, judicial decisions and official enactments are EXEMPT from copyright.

The University of Texas owns a complete set of the annual publications dating back to 1808. The series consists of more than 580 volumes that now grace 75 linear feet of shelves in the Benson. Only twenty-three other libraries, most of them in research institutions, listed some of the same titles among their holdings. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all these texts available online? All the titles in the Benson Latin American Collection were sent out for digitization last October (2007) but have not year appeared on Google Book Search. Maybe it is just a matter of time until Google can sort out the complicated bibliographic information for this set of books and put them all on line. Be patient.

Do stay alert to the titles opening up on Google Book Search. Meanwhile, take a look at the Central Library of the Tribunal de Justicia do Estado da Bahia That library maintains an online database of the series but the listing does not yield full-text. Other websites also provide bits and pieces of this colossal set. An interesting group, Causa Imperial, which promotes the restoration of a Brazilian Empire, provides access to the indices for the 1831-1840 series.

Lawyers interested in current issues have other sources. For English-speaking researchers interested in Brazilian law, take a look at the Legal Research Guide for Brazil provided by the Library of Congress.

The complexity of several cases has become apparent recently as we estimate the research effort that will be required to confirm public domain status of various serial sets we own so that the sets can be displayed in Full View to the public through Google Book Search.

One case we considered for follow up includes a five-volume series with extensive genealogical information about families in the state of Parana, Brazil, “Genealogia Paranaense,” compiled by Francisco Negrao. We have been able to determine from authority files and biographical sources, that Negrao died in 1937, so according to Brazilian copyright laws, his books passed into the public domain 70 years after the year of his death-in January 2008. That much is pretty straight forward.

What complicates things is that the five-volume set we own was reprinted in 1961 along with an index to the volumes prepared by Salvador de Moya. Moya, a colonel in the state military police, founded a national federation of genealogical groups in Brazil in 1949; he died in the mid-1975s, so clearly his work—unless he willed it otherwise—remains protected by copyright.

To the general reader this set may seem an irrelevant piece of antiquarianism but the reality is that to scholars the volumes offer a tantalizing insight into the military mind in countries where there are still cultural vestiges of nobility or aspirations to that world of medals, titles, and coat of arms.

The Benson Latin American Collection acquired one of the first five volumes that was discarded by the Library of Congress; later it purchased the entire reprinted set accompanied by the Index. The one volume was found to be useful and so the decision to buy the set. The series is listed in Foster Stockwell’s A Sourcebook for Genealogical Research (McFarland 2004), giving an indication that genealogists at least still are interested in this reference book. From these past actions follow the decision to make it available to the public in general. But, who to contact to get the necessary agreements? What are the chances that they will reprint the out-of-print texts?

We have not been able to determine the current address of the Instituto Genealogico Brasileiro that in 1961 was located on Rua Dr. Zuquim, 1525 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The books were originally published between 1926 and 1930 by the State Printing Office of Parana in Curitiba and reprinted in 1946 by Impressora Paranaense, which today is a large corporation that prints commercial food packaging labels. At least we know their address. What are the chances that anyone there will know about the books or have access to the original production contracts?

The website for BrazilGenWeb, a good source for genealogical institutes in Brazil, did not have a listing for the Institute. From the University of California’s Worldwide Genealogy & Family History Research bibliographies, we gathered that in 1969  the Instituto ceased publication of the Revista genealogica brasiliera, a related series started by Moya. It’s likely that in 1969 Moya retired or could no longer keep up with the journal or the institute.

So after two hours of research, we have not much more than dead ends. What would be the most effective way of finding Moya’s family in order to clarify the status of Negrao’s original text and to obtain the required approval to display the text online? Even though the texts are in the public domain in Brazil, they are protected by U.S. law for 95 years after the date of original publication, since Negrao’s work did not go into the public domain before 1996.

We will file this one for now, and go on to the next case…