Robin -- 

The best place to start is to check under what
circumstances the institution which owns the original
provided the copy to your museum. Copyright aside, at
some point, that institution extended a courtesy and
it's always best to try to return the favor.

The path that copy took to your museum may have been
highly informal -- someone made a copy for a friend at
your museum; or a staff member from your museum got a
copy while visiting or it may have been obtained under
interlibrary loan fair use provisions for research
purposes, or reproduced for your museum's one-time use
at some point in the past.

Unpublished manuscript material (including letters)
have certain protections under copyright law. They are
less straightforward than copyright protection of
published work and require you know a variety of facts
about the document which may, or may not, be apparent
from reading it.  

Others have posted this chart but it's worth
repeating:

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/

Among the complications, if the letter has never been
published anywhere (and unless you check with the
owner of the original, how would you even begin to
determine this?) For example - what was the author's
nationality and where was the author living when
he/she wrote the letter.

While I agree with Gayle that there's a lot of
information on copyright questions already available,
there's an awful lot of misinformation, and personal
opinions as well.

Happy New Year --

Judy Turner
Whitefish Bay, WI


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