Request government archives
Dear reader,
Let me introduce myself. I work at the legislative department of the Department of Justice in the Netherlands. In the context of copyright legislation one of my colleagues found that the US and the Netherlands have signed multiple treaties regarding copyright (https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/65576.pdf). On page 561 this document states two proclamations with the references 31 Stat. 1961 and 36 Stat. 2685. We would like to have insight to the these treaties because they might contain important information regarding the duration of copyright of American authors in the Netherlands, but we can't find them after extensively searching our own govermental archives and the archives of the US. Could you possibly tell us where we can find these proclamations? We would be very thankfull.
Answer
Thank you for your question. These proclamations are in the United States Statutes at Large. The first number of the citation is the volume number, and the second number is the page number on which the document begins. The document cited as 36 Stat. 2685 is two pages long, so it starts on page 2685 and continues on page 2686. The other document is complete on one page.
You can access the early volumes of the Statutes at Large at the Library of Congress website: https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-statutes-at-large/about-this-collection/
The files are huge and not very easy to search, so I have provided a direct link to the pages you have cited:
31 Stat. 1961 https://www.loc.gov/resource/llsalvol.llsal_031/?sp=2002&st=image
36 Stat. 2685 https://www.loc.gov/resource/llsalvol.llsal_036/?sp=3011&st=image
(Click the forward arrow to advance to the second page of this proclamation.)
The pages on this site are rendered as JPG or TIFF image files. In case you would like a PDF version, I have downloaded those from a paid subscription database that we have access to and attached them to this e-mail.
I hope this information is helpful to you. If this is not what you need, or if we can assist you further, please let us know.
Bobby Griffith
Lead Government Information Reference Associate
Sycamore Library
University of North Texas Libraries
bobby.griffith@unt.edu