Hey listers - I have a random question about copyright that I'm hoping one of the experts out there can help me with.

My organization has been collecting oral histories for nearly 30 years to help document the history of the local community. In the earliest days, the entire organization was run by volunteers (bless them) and they weren't great about record keeping. Subsequently, I have numerous oral histories that are part of the permanent collection but many of the interviewees never signed a release form. In 2016, we started a digital magazine project to take these oral histories and turn them into a general audience piece to help increase our reach and to get people interested in the museum again. We first published things digitally and then found a grant to publish it to print. I never had much concern about the process as we were publishing it under fair use because the pieces were purely educational in nature. Slight gray area with the print versions because my predecessor sold ads to help cover the remaining cost. (I've always tagged these oral histories as "Approved for internal use only, restrictions apply.")

Now, the president of the board wants to add a third component and take the audio files of the oral histories, and the articles, and use them in some type of video - to which he isn't being totally transparent about its purpose. It doesn't seem to be purely educational to me because he said it was to raise money, but again, I don't actually know what the purpose of the videos will/would be.

Is there a reason I shouldn't let him reproduce the audio files in these videos, other than his project isn't sanctioned by the organization directly and its a personal project. Or would it be questionable practice according to copyright law?

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

-Keith