[Was: Disposition of Discards, Unsolicited Donations]
I'd like to thank all of you who've responded to my query on dealing with a common issue -- unsolicited donations and disposition of discards. I was hoping for simple, straightforward solution(s) -- which also would be easy to transmit to successor (voluntary) librarians. Several of you suggested ways of selling items or donating to charitable organizations, and the different variations give food for thought. We periodically do some variation on several of your suggestions, but are limited by: lack of storage space, lack of display space, lack of time, and well-intended donors who are unaware of or choose to ignore guidelines of our donation policy. At this juncture, we are discouraging any non-monetary donation if the item is not included on one of our three wish lists -- Adult Books, Children's Books, Audiovisual Media. There are a few things we are attempting to do which I thought might be helpful to share: 1. DONATION POLICY: We have a formal written DONATION POLICY, which periodically is reviewed/changed. At least annually (if not more frequently) we communicate essential points of the Donation Policy (via signs, written newsletters, electronic communication, etc.) Our donation policy includes: criteria, a requirement (often ignored) todirectly communicate with the Chair of the Library Committee and provide a list (Author and Title, or ISBN number) to see if we can accept a donation, how a donation will be acknowledged including that we do not state an assessed value for items donated, info on disposition of donated items -- including the possibility of selling items. 2. WISH LISTS: We have created Wish Lists on amazon.com and encourage any in-kind Donations to be made from our Wish Lists. We currently are discouraging any other donations. 3. DONATION REGISTRY: We have created a computerized Donation Registry to record and preserve the sentiments expressed on the bookplates of books and other media. This preserves the original intent of a donor, even if the item subsequently was removed from the collection (e.g. was lost, damaged, deaccessed, etc.) The Registry periodically may be printed and available for public perusal as a Donation Registry. I'm unlikely to reply to any additional responses to my original query, and wish to express my appreciation to allsafranim who have or will reply. Robin ---------------- Robin I. Zeitz Beth El Temple Center Library Committee Belmont, MA email: rize...@gmail.com --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@osu.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
