[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Literary Rights Issue: request for responses



Greetings to all,

I hope to gather responses on a particular problem concerning the literary
rights of the letters of a famous novelist/poet.  Our university acquired
this collection of letters during a homecoming several years ago (there is
no deed of gift).
The Library director and I are hoping to publish the incoming letters of
the author, via the Internet, for an upcoming digital project.  I am
seeking advice, suggestions, and explanations as to steps and protocol for
deducing, acquiring, and legitimizing literary rights and permissions to
make the letters available via the Internet.

The famous novelist died in the 1980?s, and I do not know of any
publication of his letters anywhere.  The foundation, named in his honor,
publishes the novels and poetry anthologies and has the literary rights to
those published novels?this organization may or may not have primary
sources such as family papers, letters, etc.   They have not been
contacted, and neither has the daughter of the author.  My original action
was to try to make contact with the recipient of the more than 200 incoming
letters: to a fellow classmate during college years, known as ?Nick.?

So, as to background ? Nick donated all the letters to the university
during a campus homecoming a few years ago, except no deed of gift was ever
signed.   An attempt was made to contact this elderly gentleman in his
90?s ? but we have deduced that he has either passed on or resides in a
nursing home.   I had gotten his telephone number from the Development
office, although we were unable to reach him as his phone has since been
disconnected.

Who can shed light on the issues of literary rights and where to acquire
them, or how to publish the letters via the Internet and be within ethical
limits?

I have processed the letters and read where the author ?gave? the letters
to bosom buddy ?Nick,? to do with as he wished.   Now that we have had no
luck finding him, to seek permissions and details on the collection ? what
are the next steps?

We hope to make these never-before-published letters available via
digitization and SGML to the Internet.  What is the proper protocol and to
what extend should we seek out the proper permissions to publish the
material to the ?Net?  What do we need to do to ?publish? them to the
Internet?  Should the foundation be contacted?  Seek permissions from the
children of both men?  Who actually owns the literary rights?  When does
the unpublished material naturally fall into the public domain?

Please respond as you wish!

Many thanks for your responses!
Keys1212

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>