Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Collections & Reading Rooms > Berg Collection

Permission To Publish

Permission to publish quotes from manuscript material still under copyright will not be granted by the office of special collections until the Curator of the Berg Collection has received a signed permission statement from the copyright holder or estate executor.

This statement may be sent by post and fax, or by e-mail, if it has been sent directly from or forwarded from the copyright holder’s or estate executor’s e-mail address (i.e., it may not be a “copy-and-paste” message).

However, if you have made a good-faith effort to locate the copyright holder or estate executor, but have failed to identify him/her, please so inform the Curator in your letter, fax, or e-mail, and ask for a “hold harmless” form to sign and return to the Curator. The form states that you have, indeed, made a good faith effort to locate the author’s copyright holder or estate executor and that you hold the Library harmless for any copyright infringement caused by the publication of your work.

Requests for permission to publish must include the Berg’s catalog or finding aid descriptions of citations to the material from which the researcher wishes to quote, either in whole or in part. Citations to correspondence must include the names of the sender and recipient and the date of the letter. Citations to manuscript works (e.g., fair copy or draft of novel, short story, poem or collection of poems, notebook, etc.) must include the author’s name, the title as given in the catalog or finding aid description, and the date that the work was completed, or the date ascribed to it by the catalog or finding aid. In your list of the repositories you have consulted, cite the Berg Collection thus : “The Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.” Other references may refer simply to the “Berg Collection.”

After the Curator has received the copyright holder’s or estate executor’s signed permission statement, and after your citations have been checked, the Curator will approve your request and forward it to the Office of Special Collections, which will send you the Library’s official letter of permission.

As in the case of manuscript material still under copyright, quotations from manuscript material no longer under copyright will not be permitted unless a list of citations has first been sent to the Curator. The Curator will then forward your request, with his approval, to the Office of Special Collections, which will send you the Library’s official letter of permission.

Publication of photographs: The publication of photographs of texts or graphic images still under copyright requires the same procedures as the publication of quotations. However, you must also contact the Photographic Services & Permissions Office (see the link on the Library’s home page www.nypl.org) and follow the instructions on their permissions form. Their site also contains a list of fees.

Next Section: Reprographic Orders