At least 3 million orphan books exist in Europe – works which are still in copyright but cannot be digitised because the rights holders cannot be traced to grant permission – according to a newly published report from the European Commission.
The study gathered responses from 22 cultural institutions involved in digitisation work, including many national libraries and national film collections. Not only books are affected. There is an especially high percentage of orphan works among photographs and audiovisual collections, says the report.
“Even when institutions are intentionally focusing their digitisation efforts on what they believe is public domain material, a lot of effort to establish the exact copyright status is required.”
“Only material from as far as pre-1870 may relatively safely be assumed to be in the public domain, but it turns out that the oldest book still in copyright in the UK dates back to 1859.”
The issue of orphan works is critical for Europeana, which plays a key role in making Europe’s digital resources available online. In the “Europeana – Next Steps” report released in May, members of the European Parliament called on the European Commission to establish a “simple and cost-efficient rights clearance system”.
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