From: "Robin I. Zeitz" <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 01:10:15 -0500
Joan: We have a written library policy to provide guidance on our collection and weeding policies, donations, circulation procedures, other administrative procedures. Regarding our donations policies, we've had varied success in effectively communicating them to our congregation, and one motivation to creating a written policy was to advise donors that potentially their donation would not be accepted and if accepted, that it could be removed from the collection. Relevant parts have been posted in our monthly bulletin as well as within our small library. The policy was developed using various online sources. Due to our small size, and volunteer-only staff, we've decided to generally discourage donation of any item without prior authorization from the Library Chair. Previously, we gave criteria -- oftentimes ignored -- for donations . At present, we encourage monetary donations to our dedicated Library Book Fund or purchase from our amazon.com wish lists. Our policy also indicates disposition of items and reserves the right to remove any item from our collection. We also created what we term a "Donation Registry" -- a computer record of all donated items which "periodically may be printed and available for public perusal. . .An attempt will be made to maintain an ongoing record of items donated that were subsequently removed from the collection." The introduction to this *Donation Registry* includes the following explanation: A primary purpose of this registry is to record and preserve many of the sentiments expressed on the bookplates of books and other media that were extant within our collection at the time we computerized our records. Donations include “gifts to the library” as well as those in celebration of a *simcha (*Bar/Bat Mitzvah, birth, wedding, birthday, anniversary, graduation, job promotion, retirement); to express appreciation for some event, deed, or service; or to honor a memory. We conceived of this registry to preserve the original intent of a donor, even if the item subsequently was removed from the collection (e.g. was lost, damaged, etc.) With respect to lost books and other fines, currently, we do not charge fees for overdue items. Overdue notices are given (by telephone, e-mail, and/or mail) if an item is overdue. Any item not returned following two overdue notices (or overdue more than 90 days) will be considered lost, and the borrower will be billed to replace it. Replacement fines are calculated using actual replacement cost although we've also considered charging a fixed amount to include an administrative charge. The fixed amount would vary by item, adult hardcover, adult paperback, child hardcover, child paperback, audiobook, Hebrew-language materials, other audiovisual items, etc. -- *Robin* ---------------- Robin I. Zeitz Beth El Temple Center, Belmont, MA Library Committee email: [email protected]
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