Orphan works pose significant challenges to nonprofit libraries, archives, and other memory organizations. When these organizations seek to reuse orphan works—copyrighted works whose owners cannot be located—they face the perceived risk of costly infringement suits from copyright owners who might later emerge. But libraries, archives and other memory organizations hold many orphan works in their collections, and risk averse organizations that do not make these works available may fail to fulfill part of their core missions of preserving cultural and intellectual artifacts and providing access to users in a format and context that is meaningful to them.
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Go to: Report on Orphan Works Challenges
The visual arts communities of practice share a common problem in their confusion about and misunderstanding of the nature of copyright law and the availability of fair use. Their work is constrained and censored, most powerfully by themselves, because of that confusion and the resulting fear and anxiety. More and better work can be done through a fuller understanding of copyright, without impairing the ability of artists and art historians to receive credit for, maintain appropriate control over, and monetize their work.
ARL, American University's (AU) Washington College of Law, and AU's School of Communication released a new infographic that tells the story of library fair use and the 
The transition from 1.0 to 2.0 opens opportunities for documentarians to fulfill and expand their missions—not only informing individuals and leading public conversation but also building community cohesion and participation. This working paper aims to synthesize current efforts to develop comparable evaluation methods for social issue documentary films. Authored by two researchers who have been jointly documenting the field’s transformation over the past five years, this paper offers a framework for planning and evaluating the impact of these films in a networked media environment.
The Center for Social Media, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) are pleased to announce the release of 