Publish a notice in the newspaper. Ask the owner. The owner of the manuscript may also control the copyright. With increasing frequency, repositories and individual collectors attempt to obtain assignment of copyrights along with physical ownership of the manuscripts. If the owner does not control the copyright, ask if he or she knows the name and address of the legal copyright owner or owners.
Some repositories maintain files of estate addresses pertinent to the manuscripts they house.
Most repositories are free to gi ve this information to researchers. If one repository does not know the name of address of the copyright holder, another repository housing other papers by the same author may. Ask the Copyright Office. Because copyright in unpublished manuscripts often is not formally registered with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, the Office's records are not always useful. For a nominal fee, however, the Copyright Office can establish relatively quick ly whether or not it has a record of an author's heir or estate representative.