The VTSF Project has been in operation for only a short time, so although we envision a growing archive of materials relating to speculative fiction, our current offerings are few.

The initial phase of the VTSF is focusing on digitizing materials from the William J. Heron Collection of speculative fiction serials in the Virginia Tech Newman Library Special Collections, located in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The Special Collections office purchased these materials in 1988 from William Heron of Charlotte, North Carolina, who had collected science fiction magazines and paperback books for over 20 years. Heron's chief interest was in the cover art of the magazines, and he was careful to collect issues with covers in the best possible condition. The Heron collection includes one of the largest gatherings of English-language science fiction and fantasy magazines in existence--over 5000 issues of 200 different publications dating from 1926 to 1987.

Eventually, we also hope to begin drawing materials for the VTSF Project from the Heron collection of American science fiction paperback books, which contains 11,900 volumes dating from 1939 (with the origin of mass-market science fiction paperbacks) to 1987. The collection contains over 95% of the American science fiction paperbacks published during these years. Over 2200 authors and editors are represented in the collection, as are over 1000 science fiction artists.

The Copyright Problem
Our efforts to preserve and share these materials are, of course, affected by the current uncertainties about copyright restrictions on electronic materials. It is our stated goal to infringe on no one's property rights, so we are trying to use materials from the Heron collection which have already entered the public domain. Our current understanding is that works which were granted copyright prior to December 31, 1977, fall under the Copyright Act of 1909 which granted a 28 year copyright with an option of a 28 year renewal. Accordingly, copyrighted works which were published prior to 1966 and which have not had their copyrights renewed, are now considered to be in the public domain. Since the amount of public domain material in the Heron collection increases with each year's passing, we hope to gradually add materials to the on-line offerings from more recent periods.

Scholars and other interested readers of speculative fiction are welcome to visit the Virginia Tech Newman Library Special Collections office to review materials available there which cannot yet be offered on-line. Please contact Mr. Eric Ackermann, Special Collections, at 703-231-9205, or eackerma@vt.edu.