University of Michigan Puts HathiTrust Orphan Works Project on Hold

University of Michigan Library is reexamining its pilot for identifying orphan works in the HathiTrust project.  The project could be put on hold.

"The University of Michigan (UM) Library today released a statement announcing that it would be examining its "flawed" pilot process for identifying orphan works, putting its HathiTrust orphan works project effectively on hold. This follows reaction about the status of several works on its publicly posted orphan candidates list.

The statement also comes in the wake of a lawsuit filed on September 12 by the Authors Guild, Australian and Canadian authors' organizations, and eight authors against HathiTrust, UM, and four other member universities to stop them from "reproducing, distributing and/or displaying" copyrighted works.

The HathiTrust orphan works project was previously due to make some full-text electronic versions of orphans—in-copyright works for which rights holders cannot be found—available to the UM community starting October 13."

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