Access to original material and artifacts is restricted for preservation reasons; photocopies of Dickinson's poems and letters are used. Permission from the Head of Archives and Special Collections is required to use original Dickinson material. Original poems and letters will not be photocopied due to preservation concerns, duplications will be made from the Emily Dickinson Photocopy Collection instead. Materials from other institutions which are found in the Emily Dickinson Collections cannot be duplicated, as indicated.

Requests for permission to publish material from the Collection should be directed to the Head of Archives and Special Collections. Because reproducing a manuscript necessarily reproduces the text it contains, permission to publish reproductions or facsimiles of original Dickinson manuscript material from the Amherst collection will also require the permission of Harvard University, which claims rights in all Dickinson manuscript texts. Amherst's permission is contingent on Harvard's being granted, and a copy of Harvard's permission must be supplied to Amherst. Permission requests to Harvard University should be directed to Office of Copyrights and Permissions, Harvard University Press, 79 Garden Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-1499 (tel. 617-495-2600; fax 617-496-4677). The office does not accept email requests. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.