posted by elizabethTG on 05, 2005
Writers, actors, presidents, and many others receive one-time correspondence from fans, critics, or even hate mail. These letters are often sold/donated to libraries and archives as part of the papers of a particular individual. While the library may own the actual letter, the library (or receiver of the letter for that matter) does not hold copyright. The task then becomes tracking down the one-time letter writer for copyright permission--and if one is using a collection of fan mail, this becomes a particularly ovewhelming process. These are unpublished letters with the copyright term of life of the author + 70 years. They are one more example of potentially unusable materials if one cannot find the author of the letter. Yet, they may provide rich sources of information. Morever, they would not easily be able to be put on the internet, and so will remain hidden in archives for many years to come.
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