Re: Hathi Orphans

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

What this article makes me wonder is, did the HathiTrust ever 
consider asking a publisher, like the University of Michigan 
Press, about the procedures it follows for determining whether a 
copyright work is an orphan or not? This is a problem publishers 
have long been accustomed to grappling with, and they have worked 
out good procedures for resolving the question. Libraries have 
not had much reason in the past to worry about the orphan status 
of works in their collections, I assume, so this is a new 
challenge for them.  My guess is that a publisher would not have 
made the same kinds of mistakes that HathiTrust evidently made 
with some of its determinations, as embarrassingly revealed by 
the Authors Guild.

Sandy Thatcher


>Of interest from the Chronicle of Higher Education
>
>***
>
>HathiTrust Acknowledges Flaws in Handling 'Orphan Works'
>
>September 16, 2011, 2:04 pm