In the Library with the Lead Pipe, a blog with consistently well written coverage of issues important to libraries and librarians, offers a thoughtful summary of the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust debacle in a recent post: As with any large membership organization, the Authors Guild operates under the guidance of a board, executive director, and legal counsel. Certainly within our own profession, our organizations have taken action or made statements with which we, as individuals,…
Posts Tagged: orphan works
There are potentially thousands of “orphan works” in the U-M Library collection that are in-copyright, digitized, and preserved works in the HathiTrust Digital Library–yet remain unavailable because copyright holders cannot be found or contacted. The Orphan Works Project, which began last month, has just announced that U-M Library will make any identified orphan works available to U-M Library users via the HathiTrust so that they are searchable, viewable, and accessible. From the press release: The…
From the press release: The University of Michigan Library’s Copyright Office is launching the first serious effort to identify orphan works among the in-copyright holdings of the HathiTrust Digital Library, which is funding the project. The vast majority of HathiTrust’s holdings are in-copyright (73%). An unknown percentage of these are so-called “orphans,” that is, in-copyright works whose owners cannot be identified or located. The lack of hard data on the number of orphans in the…