Hi All, I think I have a fairly good handle on copyright issues, but I've stumbled onto a real puzzler. I have acquired a copy (about 400 pages) of materials that were collected by a genealogist who wrote a classic history of a prominent American family in the 1920s. The book has been reprinted on several occasions by the Genealogical Publishing Company. The author, who died in the early 1960s, collected correspondence, mostly from readers of the book, which included corrections to errors in the original work, enhanced family lines, etc. Mostly information "contributed to the cause." The author was planning on publishing an addendum to the book, but ill health prevented that. Before dying, the author contributed these papers to the national Family Association for their preservation. However, this association is now defunct, having dissolved in the early 1970s. When the association dissolved, its Historian in turn passed the papers on to a large metropolitan library. They languished in their archives, unknown to the public, for nearly 30 years until I found them last year and obtained copies. So the Gordian Know I must unravel is: who owns the rights to these papers? I suspect the library would have the best argument of ownership, but none of the papers contributed meet the new 90 year standard, either. So its possible that all of the little individual fragments/letters in the papers still belong to the original contributors, or their estates. I am in touch with the current Family Association and several serious researchers of this surname. We are most desirous of getting all of these corrections/additions "out to the family" in some way. I have volunteers willing to transcribe them and a web site willing to post them. But I'm reluctant to move forward. I should add that I have the greatest respect for the original author, and feel that it is quite appropriate that all this material which was so diligently collected with the intent of publishing, somehow get published. I'm not really interested in making money on this, though it would be nice to recoup come of my expenses. Its just a matter of my having a very strong feeling, after having read these documents, that they must get disseminated. I'd sure appreciate any thoughts or words of wisdom any of you might have on this matter. I'm subbed to this list in digest mode, so if you reply directly to the list it may take me a couple of days to get your post and reply to it. Thanks, Larry -- Larry DeFrance, Helena Montana USA Caretaker: The DeFrance Family Home Page - http://www.helenet.com/~larry/fam_home.html The DeFrance Mailing List - [email protected], The Susquehanna River Mailing List - [email protected]