To answer your question. Property is not copyright. While copyright is automatic when a recording, book, music, film, poem, sculpture, or other work is rendered into tangible form, owning the work as physical property does not give you the copyright. Copyright can only be transferred from the creator(s) be an express legal document, If you do not have a legal copyright provision in your deed of gift expressly transferring all rights in the copyright, then the creator of the tapes / recordings still owns it. If your museum owns paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, or documents you do not own the copyright unless it has legally transferred to you either by contract or if it is a commissioned work, by a work for hire contract. Currently copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years in the majority of cases - so when the creator(s) die, you are dealing with heirs or foundations who were assigned the rights. Also, copyright is a separate legal issue from releases from people who are recorded or whose image appears in a photo or film. Those clearances for likeness of voice or image do not change the copyright of the work, they just may give the copyright holder legal issues. Some organizations think that if they are nonprofit then copyright clearances are not an issue. They are. Nonprofits are required to comply under the law. There is the doctrine of Fair Use, which has guidelines but is largely based on case law. In Fair Use you can use short sections, or cite, copyrighted works if the use is for news, commentary, criticism, parody, with some exceptions for education uses such as in classrooms, training, and limited use in blogs. Courts usually limit Fair Use to an appropriate and limited use in context for the commentary, news, or criticism, so usually whole works are not likely to win in a court case. So in your circumstance you do not need copyright permission from the participants who were recorded (including the interviewer), you need either a transfer of copyright or a license to use the material by the creator of the recordings. For documentary recordings like oral history or songs recorded for documentary purposes it is pretty straight forward, For songs or music produced there a layers of rights - from the lyrics and composition (which are often full of co-creators), to the sound recording (usually owned by music labels), to the mechanical rights (albums, CD's, and Jukeboxes), to digital rights. So you're issues are pretty simple and straight-forward.