In the response, the office said it "neither sets the price nor receives any direct revenue from the sale" of materials in the database. Access to those records is a service offered through an arm of the Library of Congress that is mandated by Congress to charge "a production and distribution cost plus 10 percent."

The mission of that branch, the Cataloging Distribution Service, is "to share the library's vast bibliographic resources with American libraries, the American people and the international information community on a cost-recovery basis."

According to the letter, the databases and their weekly updates require "considerable personnel and other resources to maintain and deliver." Each year, CDS evaluates its fees and at the end of September will make recommendations to management about potential cost adjustments.

Any new pricing structure will appear first at on the CDS Web site in late October or early November, then in the 2008 CDS product catalog in January 2008. Meanwhile, the database is still accessible for free on a record-by-record basis through the Copyright Office site.