The issues surrounding Orphan Works - material which is copyrighted but whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate - have been the source of much debate.  Use of Orphan Works is avoided due to uncertainty over their copyright status, even in cases where there is no longer anyone claiming copyright ownership or the owner no longer has any objection to such use.  Potentially important work therefore goes unused and this is not good for scholarship.

A number of solutions or partial solutions have been suggested.  ALPSP has been working with the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers to draft so called 'Safe Harbor' guidelines.

The guidelines are currently in draft form and the latest version (2 November 2007) is available to download here.  You are invited to provide feedback on the guidelines to Ian Russell.

These guidelines provide protection for users of Orphan Works which it later emerges are owned by publishers that are signatories to the guidelines.  The greater the number of publishers involved the more useful the initiative becomes and so ALPSP would like to encourage members to sign up to the guidelines.

Alongside this, various organizations including ALPSP, the STM Association and the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers are working on imprint lists (charting what imprints are owned by who) in order to help users track down copyright owners.  The imprint list is also available here and members can suggest additions by contacting Ian Russell.