ARROW Plus, a project co-financed by the European Commission as part of the ICT Policy Support Programme and coordinated by the Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE) builds upon the ARROW project (Accessible Registries of Rights information and Orphan Works towards the European Digital Library).

ARROW developed a distributed European infrastructure for copyright management that allows libraries and institutions engaged in digitisation processes to determine whether a given work is copyrighted or in the public domain. The system also makes it possible to identify copyright holders to be contacted in order to obtain a digitisation license and to identify orphan works, those which the copyright holder cannot be identified or contacted for.

ARROW Plus goals include optimizing the system developed by ARROW to extend technological infrastructure to new European countries and finally to develop a  model for extending the project in order to include images contained in documents, such as photographs.

The presence of Italy – already represented by the Italian Publishers Association (Associazione Italiana Editori - AIE) as project coordinator and by Cineca as technological partner – is completed by the participation of ICCU as national coordinator for the library sector.

Other institutions involved in the project include the Federation of European Publishers (FEE-FEP), the European Digital Library Foundation, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisation, seven national libraries and numerous national associations of publishers and societies for the collective management of rights.

The project was launched on  April 1st, 2011 and concluded on December  31, 2013.

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