Sheluma

I'm not a lawyer, but I've researched this, and here is what I've found. If the manual is in the public domain, then it's legal to publicize it. The copyright rules are a little complicated because they've changed over the years, and new rules were not "grandfathered", but here is an overview of how to determine copyright status:

If the article was copyrighted in the U.S.A. prior to 1923, it is in the public domain (there may be exceptions for some foreign publications).
If the article was copyrighted between 1923 and 1963 and the copyright was not renewed 28 years (or in some cases 27 years) after the initial publication* (see note below), it is in the public domain. If the copyright WAS renewed, then it is under copyright for 95 years after the initial publication.

Here is a chart that outlines it better than I can:
http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Now, to find out if the copyright was renewed, you have to search the Catalog of Copyright Entries. This is mostly do-able online. Here is a good resource with links and info: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

Other links:
US Copyright Office (1978 to present)http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwe...cal&PAGE=First

Internet archives (1891 thru 1977)http://archive.org/details/copyrightrecords/.

* Many publications have been copyrighted one or more times after the initial publication. These are called derivative copyrights (re-published with new information). In these cases, only the new information gets the new copyright date, but knowing what is new and what is old would require comparing all the publications. I haven't been able to find out exactly what to do in these situations, so I search the Catalog of Copyrights 27 and 28 years after the initial publication and the last publication. My reasoning is that if the first and last copyrights weren't renewed, it's unlikely that the intermediate ones were. But I think to be thorough one would have to search 27 and 28 years after EACH copyright date.

From my personal research, I have found that most of the older Singer educational materials are in the public domain. Some of their older manuals may still be under copyright.

As an aside, I posted a thread on QB that was deleted because it had an image from a Singer book (not a manual). It was in the public domain and legal to publicize it, but QB said they needed written proof. Of course I can't expect QB to look through Copyright Catalogs every time someone posts an image or to trust that board members have done their research, so this is understandable. (If anyone wants a copy of the parts list that I posted, PM me.)