University of Michigan shares orphan works. Wow.
University of Michigan to start releasing orphan works.
This news is pretty incredible- most institutions are risk averse, and it’s hard to blame them. As they point out, though, not sharing this works is harmful to scholarship and learning, while sharing them probably doesn’t harm anyone. But now we get to see what happens when an institution tries this type of action, and I’m very impressed that they’ve put themselves out there like this. And although I don’t have personal knowledge of what’s going on here, I’ll bet they do have plans and policies for what happens when an author or rights holder is found.