The public library as a place for the sharing of culture

This case study of Newcastle Libraries was written by myself in December 2016 for inclusion in Fred Saunderson's and Gill Hamilton's book Open licensing for cultural heritage  published August 2017. This is one of two contributions published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (the other being Merete Sanderhoff's "Small steps, big impact: how SMK became SMK Open").

Newcastle Libraries are the public libraries serving the citizens of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Newcastle is the biggest city in the North East of England and its library service, in particular the City Library, attracts users from across the region and beyond. The City Library houses the local studies and family history collections - this section also regularly receives requests and enquiries from overseas customers.

In the early 2000s a funded project allowed Newcastle Libraries to digitise a large part of its local history photographic collections and to publish them on a dedicated website called Tyneside Life and Times. However, a few years later the website encountered technical difficulties and the photographs were moved to the Flickr image hosting platform in June 2009. When the Flickr albums were created the images’ legal status appeared as the default copyright setting. Download was originally disabled but this was changed early on, although this particular feature was never publicised. Apart from the Torday collection (a thousand photographs of 1960s-1970s Newcastle) which was digitised by a volunteer and uploaded to a new album, the historic images collection on Flickr has only been extended on an ad hoc basis.

In 2015 I started developing at Newcastle Libraries the Commons are forever project, with support from the Carnegie UK Trust’s Library Lab programme. Commons are forever aimed to empower people and inform them of their rights to use and re-use works that are either in the public domain or available under an open licence, and encourage them to in turn share their creations with others. The project took the form of a series of events where members of the public were invited to create their own artworks in workshops facilitated by local artists, while learning about copyright and where to find free-to-use content.

A secondary goal of the project was to firmly re-position the library service as a place for the sharing of culture. Public libraries are traditionally making knowledge and culture accessible through loaning materials to members of the community, but I believe raising awareness of works that are out of copyright - in the public domain i.e. that belong to all - or under open licenses is also part of libraries’ role. On that basis, it made sense to me to use Commons are forever to also promote resources that are part of Newcastle Libraries’ collections and have entered the public domain. Since we were promoting free-to-use materials as part of the project we also needed to apply those sharing principles to our collections and our services.

The first step would be to correctly re-label the local history images on Flickr from “copyright - all rights reserved” to “public domain”. In order to get this agreed and done I started talking to colleagues in June 2015. It emerged that the issue was less about owning copyright over the digitised pictures and more about enforcing an indication of provenance: people who were not using our pictures for commercial ventures should be able to use them for free but be obliged to mention they were from our collections. However, it was felt that claiming copyright was still important because we were the keepers of the collection: if people want to make money from using our pictures then the library should get something too, and it should be clear that the images came from Newcastle Libraries. As we were selling copies of our pictures, the potential loss of income was mentioned - at a time of budget reductions even the small amount we were making may become significant.

Swing Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1889
From the Newcastle City Library Photographic Collection

After this initial meeting the conversation stalled as changing this particular policy which had been in place for a while was not part of the team’s priorities. The topic was picked up on several occasions over the following year and the number of people involved in the discussions was extended to the wider group of librarians. To get colleagues to understand why I wanted the Flickr images’ status changed from in copyright to public domain I used arguments such as: “because you’re trying to claim rights that you probably don’t have, what we are doing now is slightly illegal but also ethically wrong”!

Towards the end of the Commons are forever project the focus moved from sharing creative works to sharing data and information collected by the library service. We released performance statistics and usage figures as open data - using the UK Open Government Licence (OGL) which allows anyone to re-use the information in any way, as long as the source of the information is credited. In April 2016 we ran a one-day hackathon when we invited members of the community to “play” with our open data. For the occasion we were also given permission to publish 31 digitised historical maps of Newcastle from the libraries’ collections - in the public domain, clearly labelled as such in a Flickr album. The maps proved quite popular, with several participants using them to superimpose “old Newcastle” to a current map to highlight the evolution of the city centre.

I think what happened with the maps helped to show colleagues what releasing our information and content meant, and more importantly that it did not harm the library service. On the contrary, it was interesting to see what citizens had done with our maps when appropriating them - re-using them in ways we had not thought of and contributing to the visibility and reach of our collections.

Plan de Newcastle ou Neuchastel
From the Newcastle Libraries collection

In August 2016 we changed the status of our local history images on Flickr to “public domain”. Each album now bears the mention:

“These images are, to the best of our knowledge, in the public domain. You are welcome to use them in any way you like – we would love it if you could say you got them from the Newcastle City Library Photographic Collection. If you want to use the images for commercial purposes we can provide you with a high quality digital image for a fee – just contact us.”

On the spur of the moment, it was also decided to move the Torday collection (the copyright of which had been assigned to Newcastle Libraries) into the public domain - under CC0.

We were pleased to see this initiative bear fruits a few months later, with an article in a local newspaper about Newcastle’s old Odeon cinema featuring several of our Flickr images - all in the public domain but nevertheless used with the mention “from the Newcastle City Library Photographic Collection”.

Around the same time we changed the status of of our local history images on Flickr to “public domain”, we also decided to stop using OGL for our open data and use CC0 instead, making it even easier for our information to be re-used.

In December 2016 we went further: we librarians agreed that in the future all Newcastle Libraries collections and documents published online would be made open by default. All public domain materials digitised from our collections will be clearly labelled as such when published. Materials created by library staff - images, event pictures, information booklets, training guides, etc. - will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license. In 2017 we will start making more of our content available via platforms such as Flickr and GitHub.

Commons are forever

This article is the write-up of a talk entitled Empowering users about their rights to use creative works I gave at the National Acquisitions Group (NAG) conference on 14 September 2016. This write-up is also to be published in the Winter edition of NAG's journal Taking stock - which is why it's a bit more formal than my usual posts!

Did you know that Selma, the film about an episode of Martin Luther King’s life released in January 2015, does not use his actual speeches? It is because of copyright issues.

Have you ever tried watching a music video on YouTube, and instead it showed you a message: “This video contains content from … who has blocked it on copyright grounds”?

Copyright is everywhere and even celebrities seem to get embroiled in infringement cases – in these conditions, how can we expect library customers and the wider community to know what they can and can’t do with copyrighted works, especially online videos and images?

Copyright criminal by Alec Couros [cropped]
licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (Source: Flickr)

What role do libraries have to play in this?

Libraries exist to defend people’s right to enrich and improve their own lives, their environment and society. We library and information professionals make this happen by facilitating access to and the sharing of information, knowledge and culture. Therefore we should be helping our customers discover works they have a right to use freely, such as works in the public domain e.g. that belong to them.

The Commons are forever project at Newcastle Libraries

My role at Newcastle Libraries is within the Business & IP Centre. My colleagues and I are certified by the UK Intellectual Property Office to provide inventors and entrepreneurs information on patents, designs, trade marks and of course copyright. I often feel like people leave us feeling a bit scared about using intellectual property (IP), as we have to tell them to be careful when using IP that may belong to others. What I wanted to do is to invert this situation entirely, and instead tell library users: “yes, it's fine, you can use this without fear of infringement”.

What gave me the impetus I needed was the Carnegie UK Trust Library Lab programme, which aims to support innovation and leadership in public libraries. A call for projects was issued in September 2014 and I was lucky enough to be selected as part of the first cohort of Partners. Thanks to the programme I was able to access funding to develop my project and was supported by a mentor – artist and curator Dominic Smith.

The project became known as Commons are forever. It aimed to empower members of the public about their rights to use creative works that are free of copyright, e.g. in the public domain, and to in turn share what they create with others. It took the form of a series of events that ran at Newcastle City Library from April 2015 to Autumn 2016; the events being a mean of engaging citizens in learning about copyright and enabling them to be creative and actually re-use works.

Rebecca Moosavian and Cory Doctorow at Newcastle City Library
Image by Steve Brock under Creative Commons BY-NC (Source: Flickr)

“Discover and re-use creative works at your library”

Commons are forever was launched with a talk entitled "Copying – right or wrong?" with local law lecturer Rebecca Moosavian and author and activist Cory Doctorow. With this event we sought to both attract attention as Cory Doctorow is a well-known science-fiction and young adult writer but also to get people to understand what copyright is and the potential issues with the current system. It was certainly thought-provoking, with Cory Doctorow proposing that copyright on a work last only 12 years (compared with the duration of the life of the author plus 70 years currently!) with the possibility to be renewed but only by the creator.

Other events in the series were developed in collaboration with local digital media artists and focused on remixing public domain or openly-licensed works. There were an “archive cut-and-paste” session using images from the City Library's local history collections; a film remix workshop where participants re-recorded dialogues from public domain films; a live-coding session using sounds that have been published under an open licence... New creative works made by participants during the events were shared via the Newcastle Libraries' Flickr account.

We also ran in both 2015 and 2016 a photography competition called "We Love Monuments!" based on the Wikimedia Foundation's Wiki Loves Monuments but restricted to pictures of listed buildings and monuments within the borders of Newcastle City Council. Participants had to upload their entries to Wikimedia Commons, where all content is either in the public domain or under an open licence. They therefore learned about the licences and discovered Commons as a collaborative repository for such content. The pictures uploaded now contribute to promoting Newcastle's history and heritage on Wikipedia and engaged the community in making a record of the local area.

Old and New Newcastle by Alan Warriner - winner of We Love Monuments! 2015
Published under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

From creative works to open data

Several of the events involved coding or other digital literacy skills – during the project we were able to test out these types of activities which now form part of the legacy of Commons are forever at Newcastle Libraries. Another part of the project's legacy is the work we have been doing around open data. 

Commons are forever was originally focused on re-using creative works: works created by others - the type that in libraries we facilitate access to e.g. books, images... But our library service also collects and creates information and content: we therefore wanted to open these up and get citizens to re-use them as well. 

We published as much of Newcastle Libraries' statistics and data sets that we could under an open licence on the Council's open data pages, and invited members of the community to have a play at our first mini-hackathon – Wuthering Hacks – in April 2016. We continue to work on updating and expanding the data sets we make available, and finding ways to engage our local community in using and re-using the information.

Impact of the overall project

• 53% of event attendees who filled in a feedback form say the event has improved their understanding of how they can use open licenses and what the public domain is. (40% said they already had a good understanding.)
• Before the events, 14% of attendees said they felt very confident about using work either in copyright or out of copyright correctly while 25% said they did not feel confident doing so at all. After the event, 36% now felt very confident and the ones who did not at all were 4%.
• 53% of participants said the event they attended has contributed to improve their image of public libraries (47% already valued public libraries).
• 86% of event participants strongly agree that the library is a place for the exchange of knowledge and sharing of culture (10% slightly agree). 
• Through the project we have worked with three local artists, a local lecturer, a local photography group, a local arts and heritage project and the local open data community; none of whom the library service had ever engaged with before.

Mimi and Eunice sketch - Copyleft Nina Paley

Do the same in your library 

I believe opening up library collections and information and empowering citizens about their rights to use and re-use works is part of the mission of libraries and our role as professionals. Libraries should be part of the open movement as we have a similar ethos; librarians should be contributing to open source tools if we can and promote the use of open content, tools and resources to their local community.

To do that might be more of an organisational change: it is not just about empowering library users but about empowering staff, and changing the policies relating to library content to make it “open”.

Another lesson from Commons are forever would be: be cunning in your event planning – organise something fun and creative to teach something as dry as copyright!

And finally: do not be afraid, just try things and see what happens.

MozFest, part 2: copyright & public domain remix

Last month I went to MozFest - the Mozilla Foundation's Festival for an open internet. I started sharing my notes in a first post about all the sessions on open data I attended, and here is a write-up from two sessions related to copyright and remixing public domain works.

Reform EU copyright: what's wrong with it, and what you can do
What better way to start the festival than with a session on copyright - right?! Plus it took place in the library... 😍

Inside the library at Ravensbourne - with CC cushions for the occasion!

The facilitator explained that the European Commission has now handed the draft copyright law to the European Parliament - "MEPs are elected by citizens, and they will listen, if we're loud enough". Each speaker outlined a particular issue in the draft.

• Caroline (Copyright for Creativity) made us do a quick quiz to see how well we knew copyright exceptions in Europe - "Is it legal to quote a picture, a film, ... ?" "Those of you who said yes, you live in Finland!" She was dynamic and frank in her way of speaking; after the quiz question around the copyright exception for text and data mining and the circumstances in which it is legal, she made the comment: "As soon as it's too efficient, it's illegal"!
• Alek (Centrum Cyfrowe and Communia) discussed copyright and education - "Ask yourself which of the two is a basic human right, and I hope the answer is obvious". Education is so important, it is good that a copyright exception was included into this reform but the proposal is not enough. The text and data mining exception includes a non-contract override but not the education exception - which to Alek does not make sense.
• Karolina (IFLA) gave more details on the proposed text and data mining exception in the draft: it would only apply to research organisations and for research purposes, whereas libraries want text and data mining to be allowed both for non-commercial AND commercial purposes. It is important that we don't let culture, research and enterprise be limited by arbitrary restrictions.
• Dimi (Wikimedia Foundation) talked about the need to strengthen the commons. For example, laws in Germany and Spain are inconclusive when it comes to copyright in copies or digitised versions of public domain works - this is true to an extent even in the UK. "We're afraid that our public domain is being carved out. We believe there should be a clause to safeguard our public domain in the copyright legislation."
• Tim (Creative Commons) explained the proposal on ancillary copyright for press publications. This type of copyright has already been tried in Spain, where people realised it wasn't working the way it was supposed to. In fact the web traffic to press websites decreased and Google News just decided to shut down. But "the publishers need Google News more than Google News needs the publishers". Another problem is that the proposal would not affect only articles, but also snippets on social media, potentially articles under open licenses; it would apply to scientific publishing too, threatening current open access models. Tim's view was that ancillary copyright (also called "link tax") goes above and beyond copyright, and the draft law does not make clear who that right applies to, potentially making it dangerously broad.
• Diego (EDRi) described the proposed copyright upload filters on user content as a "massive attack on the Internet", YouTube's Content ID but worse, a "censorship machine". The Commission wants to prevent the availability of content by monitoring uploads, shifting the responsibility of enforcing copyright to the content platforms.

So, what can we do about all this?

• Tune in to the #FixCopyright hashtag and find out what will happen;
• join Wikimedia, Creative Commons or another organisation involved in pushing for copyright reform;
• "Your voice matters!" - feedback during consultations, sign petitions, email your MEP;
• play the numbers: the more we shout the more we'll get heard.

And finally:

• We need to have these complicated conversations with people who may be unexpected allies.
• Libraries need to advise users on how copyright works, because people don't know what they can and can't do with creative works. [Not my words, the speaker's!!]

Remix your own historical narratives

This session was delivered by three librarians from New York State - Nate, Davis and Matthew. They were clear from the start: "We're using you as guinea pigs!" They explained they are aiming to run this type of sessions for librarians to gain some web literacy skills, and for them to in turn run sessions in their libraries.

"There's a tremendous push from galleries, libraries, archives and museums to put collections online e.g. images" though some are locked down with copyright while some are open. In this workshop people learn some basic HTML and discover sources of free-to-use historical images by remixing and manipulating media to produce a zine or a comic.

The zines and comics can be created "in hard copy" by printing pictures and using paper and glue to put them together (which is what I did during the session!) but the aim is to use the zine-o-matic and comic creator templates. Using Mozilla Thimble to remix projects, you simply need to edit the code to make your own comic/zine by inserting the URL of pictures that are in the public domain or openly licensed and by changing the captions.

I loved the session as it was exactly the type of things I've been trying to do these past couple of years with the workshops part of my Commons are forever project: getting people to be creative and remix works that are freely and legally accessible while making them aware of public domain and open licences... And now I have two new tools to try out in a future workshop in my library!

The zine I created during the session... brought to you as a GIF

Notes from the remaining sessions will be published in a third blog post.

My Carnegie Library Lab project

Did you know that Selma, the recent film about an episode of Martin Luther King’s life, does not use his actual speeches? It is because of copyright issues.

Have you ever tried watching a music video on YouTube, and instead it showed you a message: “This video contains content from … who has blocked it on copyright grounds”?

Copyright is everywhere - so how do you know what you can and can’t do? Where can you find free works that you can legally use?

CC BY-NC-SA Chris Messina
(Source: Flickr)

From these questions, my answer obviously is: libraries can show you. Libraries are here to share knowledge and facilitate access to information, so we should help people know their rights and discover free content. But how do we do that? How do we attract attention to this problem and the role libraries can play? How do we start changing people's attitudes?

And that's when Carnegie Library Lab came along...

Carnegie Library Lab is a programme of the Carnegie UK Trust which aims to develop leadership and innovation in public libraries. For me, applying was the opportunity to bring together my interest in copyright issues (some of my colleagues would say I'm a bit of a copyright geek!), my belief in the role of libraries, my envy at seeing super cool things happening in France or the US (but not much in the UK) to promote public domain works and users' rights online - and do something with it all.

And then - quite extraordinarily - my project was one of the seven selected (Hehe!) If I'm honest, I'll say that one of my library managers, who did tell me my application was very good, also admitted that they didn't quite expect it to win as my project looked quite... radical!!

Now, there is a lot of work to do to implement it but it is also one of the most exciting things I've worked on! Thankfully, I can rely on colleagues for help and support (poor @biblioluke has been roped into it again) as well as the wonderful Carnegie Library Lab gang - formally known as the Carnegie Partners. As part of the programme, the Carnegie Trust has provided me with a mentor: Dominic Smith, on top of being an artist and digital curator, also has a PhD in open source (how cool is that?!)

The first hurdle for me to overcome was finding the project a proper name. It wasn't easy - finally I picked one that had both a literary reference in it (I have never read any Ian Fleming novel, but his titles are just perfect for parody) and the potential to spark an interesting conversation on the duration of copyright...

So to sum up: Commons are forever is a project developed by Newcastle Libraries with support from the Carnegie UK Trust. It aims to empower members of the public about their rights to use creative works that are free of copyright, i.e. in the public domain, and to in turn share what they create with others.

This will be achieved through a series of events to take place from April 2015 to March 2016. Ideas (to be developed / enhanced / changed / scrapped / revived) so far include: a debate on copying, a “where to find free ebooks” session, a hackday using library data, participation in Wiki Loves Monuments, workshops with local artists and Makers to give attendees the chance to use and re-use expired intellectual property (e.g. library collections in the public domain) and share the new works created under a Creative Commons license via a LibraryBox...

The name's Library. I'll-show-you-where-to-find-copyright-free-stuff Library.

Prepare yourself to hear a lot more about this project on this blog (and elsewhere?) in the year to come!

INPI Keeps Calm and Carries On

This post is inspired by a conversation I've had with @biblioluke, which started with his discovery via The IPKat that someone wanted to register "Je suis Charlie" as a trademark, and ended with us agreeing that "INPI Keeps Calm and Carries On" would just be too good - a blog post title - to miss. So bear with me, I'll explain what happened in between, and add a few thoughts and references.

7th January 2015: attack on freedom of speech at the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris - 12 people killed. As explained in this BBC article, the rallying phrase and logo "Je suis Charlie" was created by Joachim Roncin and quickly adopted by millions of people in France and the rest of the world.

Roncin himself is not claiming any rights over either the phrase or image, saying it belongs to all - i.e. it is in the public domain. The thing with public domain works is that since it belongs to everyone, people are free to also use them in commercial ways. Some tried to gain a commercial advantage by registering the phrase "Je Suis Charlie" as a trademark, which gives a monopoly over the phrase in a particular territory and for particular categories of goods/services. Over 50 applications were received by the French office for industrial property INPI, according to this article by BFM TV [in French]. What interested me in this article is that it said INPI is rejecting those applications on the grounds that the mark is not distinctive (one of the criteria for trademark registration everywhere) since it is largely used by the community, rather than by saying it is immoral or offensive (since another criteria for registration is that the mark cannot be offensive). The IPKat, in the article mentioned at the top, raised the question of whether applications such as these should be rejected on morality grounds, mentioning attempts in the USA to trademark "MH.17" but also "I can't breathe".

Someone in Belgium also applied to register "Je suis Charlie"
as a trademark, before changing their mind

Thankfully, both INPI in France and BOIP in Benelux (see picture above) say they will reject any attempts at trademarking "Je suis Charlie". So really: INPI Kept Calm and Carried On.

Hey, wait a minute! Keep Calm and Carry On - that's also in the public domain, right? In theory, yes: it was created by the British government and "published" (though in a rather confidential way) in 1939 according to this article on the topic, so the Crown copyright on it had long expired (it's 50 years for published works, 125 for non-published ones) when the poster was re-discovered by booksellers in Alnwick, Northumberland. The owners of Barter Books were happy for others to re-use the poster too and everyone was making money from it until... they were stopped because one of their competitors had managed to get an EU-wide trademark over the phrase (the article really is worth reading) But how did that happen when so many people were using it? Surely that meant that, just like "Je suis Charlie", "Keep calm and carry on" is not distinctive?

So if you can't trust your IP office to grant registration to the right kind of stuff, what do you do?

Unfortunately for you, I have recently been reading this very interesting article by Lionel Maurel [in French] which features among other things the Defensive Patent License - basically: you patent stuff so trolls can't have them and you make the patents available to use to a group of people who share your ethos. So before my brains (or yours, if you've had to put the aforementioned article through Google Translate and are now trying to make sense of the result) completely turn to mush, I'd like to ask two more questions: is registration really the best way to protect something from abuse even though it is something that could have belonged to the public domain? Following the examples of "Je suis Charlie" and "Keep calm and carry on", how do you make it work in the field of trademarks? The ALS Association tried to defensively trademark "Ice-bucket challenge" - erm, it didn't work out well for them.

Further reading:

Ledesma, R. (2015). Some Idiot Will Probably Try to Trademark #JeSuisCharlie. It Won't Work. [online] WIRED. Available at: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/do-not-trademark-je-suis-charlie/ [Accessed 14 Jan. 2015].

Copyright Masterclass

On 11th June I attended the ASLIB "Copyright Masterclass" led by Naomi Korn. Here are some titbits from my notes with some added explanations of my own.

The law is "late"
There is a discrepancy between what we want to do (usage) and what we are allowed to do. We use licences for cases where the law does not go far enough.
As the UK Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) puts it: "If the material you wish to reproduce does not fall within one of the [copyright] exceptions, or if you are unsure, you should contact the copyright owner, or someone authorised by them to grant the necessary permission." A CLA licence will usually cover you for a wider use than the copyrights exceptions, because they provide a blanket licence where rights have been cleared for specific uses (the CLA is "someone authorised by the copyright holder to grant the necessary permission"). So before copying a work, check in this order: your CLA licence, your electronic licences, exceptions to copyright law.

Copyright duration and foreign works
When copying/using a work, you would ask yourself whether the work in question is covered by copyright, and if so, who is the copyright owner.
If the work is potentially covered by copyright (I'm not going to define this here - go see the details on the IPO website) then you need to determine whether it is STILL in copyright; if the copyright has expired it's in the public domain and you're alright to use it.

Beach promenade in Pondicherry
CC BY-SA Sanyam Bahga

So how do you know if a work is in the public domain? In most cases you will need to know either when it was published or when (if) the creator died. Let's take an example: a text. If the author is British then it's easy: copyright lasts 70 years after the end of the year in which the author died. That makes sense, right: UK copyright laws apply to British works. So what happens when the author lived and worked in... Pondicherry? In India copyright only lasts up to 60 years after the author died - if the copyright has expired in the author's country but would not have in the UK, can you still use it legally here? The answer is yes - when using copyrighted works from another country in the UK, you would apply UK copyright exceptions but the copyright duration from the country of origin (think about it - it makes sense). Or as the Europeana public domain calculator says: "The Rule of Shorter Term (Comparison of Terms) applies. This means that the term of protection is that established by the legislation of the selected country, unless (barring provisions to the contrary in the legislation of that country) the term fixed in the country of origin of the work is shorter. In such cases, the term of protection is that of the country of origin."

Ooh, yes there is a public domain calculator! Did I not mention it? Sorry... Temper your enthusiasm though: the Europeana calculator is a factual one, that asks you the right questions to guide you through the different copyright rules. If you want to just be able to enter the name of a work and get an (almost) yes or no answer, try the public domain calculator developed using metadata from the French National Library (beta version at: http://www.calculateurdomainepublic.fr/)

Orphan works risk management
You have established the work you want to use is still in copyright, or you have not been able to establish that it is definitely in the public domain. You now need to obtain permission from the copyright holder (if the use you want to make of the work is not covered by your CLA or other licence, or any copyright exceptions, as mentioned above). Finding a copyright holder is not as easy as it sounds, which is why a lot of works are actually "orphan works".

Oliver Twist at the orphanage
Illustration by James Mahoney (1810-1879)

Let's consider another example: you've found an image you want to use (e.g. on the Internet), it looks like it may still be under copyright, but you are not sure who the creator is. That's where you will need to do a bit of risk management. If you use this "orphan" image nevertheless... what are the chances of you getting caught? If you get caught, what will it cost you? Are you ready to face the reputational damage, not just to you personally but to your employer/organisation, linked with being sued for copyright infringement? Well, personally (my boss will be pleased to hear), I'm not.
To help you assess the risks, the JISC-funded Open Educational Resources IPR support project offers a risk management calculator. It gives you an indicative risk level for using orphan works, depending on what type of work you are dealing with, whether it was originally created for a commercial purpose, the licence under which you intend to offer it and how much of an effort you have made in tracing the copyright holder.

Happy calculating!