WATCH Project
WATCH (Writers and their Copyright Holders) is an independently-funded research project with an office at Reading University Library. The project is jointly run by the Universities of Reading and Texas with financial support from the Strachey Trust, the British Academy and the Arts Council of England, and is an innovative example of how the Internet can be used for co-operative research.
WATCH was originally designed as a database of copyright-holders for authors of literary works in the English language. The project still has a strong literary emphasis, but has extended its remit as it has become apparent that there is no other reference source in the world which provides this sort of copyright-holder information. WATCH now collects and includes information about the copyright holders of visual artists (living and dead), photographers, sculptors, non-literary authors and celebrities (there are now entries in WATCH for Damon Hill, Jimi Hendrix and Britney Spears), and, increasingly, authors in all the major European languages.
The WATCH database is available on the World Wide Web and regular updates from Reading and from Austin are being uploaded. The WATCH web pages also include general information about literary copyright, other sources concerning copyright holders, and links to other Web pages dealing with copyright issues.
For more information contact David Sutton.