Orphan works

• Have you ever heard of the term Orphan Works?
• Are you a creator of works? This can be as a writer of a novel, play, poem, blog post; painter; graphic or game designer --> and the list can go on and on?
• Do you realise just how many works exist where the creator was never been identified?
• Or even if the name of a creator is known, no one knows what happened to the creator and therefore they can not be contacted about their work?

I am asking these questions because even though I have known for a number of years what an Orphan Work is and the problems it creates for institutions like Libraries I recently discovered I have an Orphan Work.

The simple answer to the 1st question is that an Orphan Work is a copyright work where it is difficult or impossible to contact the copyright holder (reference). I will let you follow the reference to read more about Orphan Works.

How did I as a creator find myself in this situation? In 2000, as part of a portfolio assignment, while I was studying, I decided to try and publish a library related poem to the Australian Library Journal. I was accepted for publication but then never heard anything further. This is when I did something I now regret: I did not keep checking myself for when it did appear in the Journal.

In the last couple of months I have been going through my older poetry which made me think of how this poem was worth posting to my blog. I therefore wanted to double check that this poem was never published. I checked this because I was not sure what this journal's stand is on the copyright ownership of contributors, as this is an academic journal. Doing a quick search of the online version I discovered much to my shock that it had not only been published but the editor at the time, John Levett, had lost my name. My poem has therefore been published as author unknown. Though much to Mr Levett's credit he did leave a statement asking for the author to contact him. This poem is The Idealised Librarian which I have now posted to my blog of poetry.

It is that easy to have a work you have created become an Orphan Work! Understanding what Orphan Works are and what is currently happening with Copyright, are 2 of the main drivers for me to use Creative Commons. So to discover that I myself have an Orphan Work makes me realise how careful I need to be. I hope that this is also a warning about how easy it is to lose track of what you have created.