Press Release re Orphan Works Best Practices

[Peter Hirtle <pbh6@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

CHICAGO-The Society of American Archivists (SAA)
has issued Orphan Works: Statement of Best
Practices, a 16-page report that provides what
professional archivists consider the best methods
to use when attempting to identify and locate
copyright holders. The statement, which primarily
focuses on unpublished materials because they are
usually found in archives, is available on the
associations website as a PDF at http://www.archivists.org/standards/.

            Orphan works is a term used to
describe the situation in which the owner of a
copyrighted work cannot be identified and located
by someone who wishes to make use of the work in
a manner that requires permission of the
copyright owner. Eight archivists and a
recognized legal expert in intellectual property
and copyright law developed the statement, based
upon their experiences researching copyright status.

          We created this statement to provide
archivists with a framework to discover what
materials they hold are truly orphaned works, and
in the hopes of empowering them to provide wider
access and use of those materials as a result,
said Heather Briston, chair of SAAs Intellectual Property Working Group.

            The primary authors of the statement
include Briston (University of Oregon), Mark
Allen Greene (University of Wyoming), Cathy
Henderson (University of Texas, Austin), Peter
Hirtle (Cornell University), Peter Jaszi
(American University) , William Maher (University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Aprille Cooke
McKay (University of Michigan), Richard
Pearce-Moses (Arizona State Library), and
Merrilee Proffitt (OCLC). Financial and
administrative support was provided for this
project by OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership.

          More information on SAAs Intellectual
Property Working Group can be found at:
http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ipwg/.