Richard LeComte

Biography

Richard LeComte grew up on Long Island and graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in English. For three years, he worked at New Dramatists, a playwrights' service organization in New York. He then studied journalism at the University of Missouri and worked at newspapers in Missouri, Kansas (where he was arts editor of the Lawrence Journal-World), Florida and Nevada. More recently he worked in PR at the University of Alabama, where he earned a master's in library science. He now writes for the College of Arts & Sciences at UK. He has had a strong passion for the arts from a young age, particularly in theater, and has participated in theater groups and choral ensembles.

Selected Publications:
AU  - LeComte, Richard
PY  - 2009/01/01
This article traces the movement led by the Authors Guild in the United States from 1979 to 1989 to establish a Public Lending Right -- a system to compensate authors when copies of their books are borrowed from public libraries. Librarians responded with general wariness. A 1981 special issue of Library Trends and a 1983 Library of Congress symposium aired the PLR debate. Two bills in Congress that would have formed commissions to study PLR died in committee. The article explores efforts and arguments writers and librarians put forward regarding PLR and suggests reasons why the PLR movement failed.
 
T1  - Writers Blocked: The Debate over Public Lending Right in the United States during the 1980s
 
VL  - 44
 
DO  - 10.1353/lac.0.0098
 
JO  - Libraries & The Cultural Record