gift materials

[Sharon Domier]

How are you surviving the summer? I have a question for you about gifts. The libraries in my area are really turning away most gifts – particularly huge dumps from retiring/dying faculty members. Now they want lists of titles to select from. I can understand that, our shelves are full, but as an older librarian who remembers years of not having access to East Asian materials, it is really hard to say no. So, I give a modified yes. I take the materials with the proviso that I can redistribute to students if it isn’t appropriate or necessary to the library. Most faculty are fine with that. I also have a whole office of old and acidic books from the 1930-1950s that seem far too fragile to go into a working collection but don’t fit our rare books collection. Currently I am protecting them in my office J 

 

Finally, I have a question about some of the unsolicited gifts we get. In particular I am wondering about the Korea Institute for National Unification. Do you keep them? Toss them? Have you written to ask them not to send them anymore? Sometimes I think it is appropriate to add propaganda and other times I don’t. What do you do?

 

Sharon Domier

[Hickey, C. David]

Hi Sharon and Small EA Collections colleagues,

 

Gifts are a mixed blessing, aren’t they?  I relate to the “dumping” criticism when the library ends up with so many duplicates; on the other hand, the Gifts Office staff and I have, like you, acquiesced in taking just about anything someone wants to give us, also with the proviso that we are allowed to sell the dups (and certain unique titles that don’t quite fit the Asian Studies collection scope) in our library bookstore, or send them to our sister institutions in the state system.

 

While we haven’t been inundated with Korea Institute for National Unification (or similar) pubs as such, our policy is to allow the selector (me!) to toss unsolicited propaganda.   I’m guilty of keeping some titles in my office for a long time before deciding whether to toss or add, since they may provide some research value later, if not now, especially if the propaganda is religious (Buddhist proselytizing materials in particular, since we have an Asian Religions Ph.D. track).

 

Cheers,
David

 

PS

Hope your old and acidic titles from the 30s – 50s haven’t swamped your office space---gifts waiting to be reviewed have a way of doing that in my office!

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