The University of Michigan Library Copyright Office, in partnership with the HathiTrust Digital Library, is launching an effort to identify orphan works among the holdings of the HathiTrust.
Orphan works are those which are within their copyright date restrictions but for which no copyright holder can be found: effectively, they have no parent individual or organization and are, therefore, orphaned. Still, granting access to these works can be problematic since they are not outside the realm of copyright but, so to speak, mislaid within it.
The University of Michigan/Hathi identification project will start by focusing on works published between 1923 and 1963 and aims, in the end, to create tools which will allow publicizing of orphan work information, giving copyright holders the chance to come forward and claim their intellectual property.
Orphan works are a category of material which any digitization project must take into account: should they be digitized? if they are, should they be presented under the same rules as a work that is wholly out of copyright? should they be made available with restricted access of some kind? if restrictions are put on use, what should they be?
The list of questions is nearly endless and the MHL looks forward to the information that will undoubtedly be generated by the University of Michigan project.