U-M Library to share HathiTrust orphan works

"U-M Library users soon will have access to digital versions of some of the thousands of orphan works held in common by the U-M Library and the HathiTrust Digital Library. Making these works available in HathiTrust will render them fully searchable, viewable, and accessible to U-M researchers wherever there is a connection to the Internet. This marks the next phase in the library's orphan works project, following last month's announcement that the MLibrary Copyright Office has begun identifying orphan works from among the millions of in-copyright digitized books in the HathiTrust Digital Library. Making these orphan works accessible to the U-M community will begin to unlock that large portion of the 20th-century scholarly and cultural digital record that is in copyright and unavailable because copyright holders cannot be found or contacted. The library's intent is to foster these works, and make them available so they can be used. Paul Courant, university librarian and dean of libraries, says it is integral to the library's overall mission to preserve and share the scholarly and cultural record, and is in keeping with the intent of copyright law, which is to promote progress. He also says that this sharing of orphan works falls within copyright law's "fair use" provision (specifically, section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976)...."