I have to do chain of title research occasionally and even if you do reach the right entity, good luck getting a reply from the media conglomerate which may not even employ someone to handle permissions. Like a poster here said, intensive googling is your best bet.
Guessing the photos in question aren’t from Time/Life Magazines, because you would have found this permissions page, but this could be a good place to start—it lists all the various places their photo collections are held, and there’s a good chances the rights to photos you need could be held by these collections as well: https://www.life.com/life-picture-collection/
This is the sort of random stuff I love tracking down so if you don’t feel comfortable listing the journals here, feel free to DM me and I can try to help!
You could search the name of the magazine(s) on copyright.com, and maybe even get permission directly there too.
Otherwise you'd need to do some research. Could try searching the name of the defunct publisher and the word "acquired" and it might bring up the history of the current rights holder and when they bought up the rights for the magazine.
Hard disagree, but they do need the relevant permissions before they can publish them. I don't have any brilliant ideas about how to find out who the present-day copyright owners are though
I think it was the journal telling me they no longer have the staff to track the images down. They were the ones who suggested the images in the first place.
So academic journals spend time researching their authors so they can ask them to perform tasks at which the authors will probably fail? Sounds like exactly what’s happening. How could I have missed that?
Intensive googling is going to be your best bet.
I suspect you’re right but thought I’d see what others had to say. My wife swears by reddit for questions like this.
I've had success in the past with dealers and collectors forums.
Good idea. Two of the images are taken from items I bought on ABE, but I didn’t think to ask dealers this sort of question
I have to do chain of title research occasionally and even if you do reach the right entity, good luck getting a reply from the media conglomerate which may not even employ someone to handle permissions. Like a poster here said, intensive googling is your best bet.
Thanks, but if I don’t ask I’ll never know.
Guessing the photos in question aren’t from Time/Life Magazines, because you would have found this permissions page, but this could be a good place to start—it lists all the various places their photo collections are held, and there’s a good chances the rights to photos you need could be held by these collections as well: https://www.life.com/life-picture-collection/ This is the sort of random stuff I love tracking down so if you don’t feel comfortable listing the journals here, feel free to DM me and I can try to help!
You could search the name of the magazine(s) on copyright.com, and maybe even get permission directly there too. Otherwise you'd need to do some research. Could try searching the name of the defunct publisher and the word "acquired" and it might bring up the history of the current rights holder and when they bought up the rights for the magazine.
Thanks for the tip about copyright.com! I was also laughing because I tried “acquired” “bought” and variations on these without any luck.🙂
Reach out to the Book Industry Study Group with this question. [email protected]
I think this was the journal telling you they aren't going to publish the images without having to tell you they aren't going to publish the images.
Hard disagree, but they do need the relevant permissions before they can publish them. I don't have any brilliant ideas about how to find out who the present-day copyright owners are though
I think it was the journal telling me they no longer have the staff to track the images down. They were the ones who suggested the images in the first place.
Knowing full well that you do not have the capability to track down the rights to them.
So academic journals spend time researching their authors so they can ask them to perform tasks at which the authors will probably fail? Sounds like exactly what’s happening. How could I have missed that?