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Re: Gifts to academic units



On the surface, at least, this sounds like a confounding of ownership and
custody. The owner of this stuff is the university. A departmental unit
accepts the gift on behalf of the university. They take custody. Later
they transfer (by memo?) custody to Special Collections. Ownership is
still the university.

In our case, as a public institution, only the Board of Regents is
empowered to accept gifts, a task they have delegated to certain others in
the institution. I am not absolutely sure that they know that they have
delegated part of that to me. In any event, I report all gifts to the Gift
Receipting Office so they are accounted for in reports to the board.

The real question should be which is the proper unit to accept gifts on
behalf of the university (a question to be answered by the university
lawyers) and which is the appropriate unit to hold custody. Not all stuff
acquired outside Special Collections is appropriately held in Special
Collections. Can you say no to the collection of Franklin Mint replica
coins acquired by the history department from a major financial donor that
they now want to offload to Special Collections?

   ---Terry

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-
Terry Abraham   Special Collections, University of Idaho
<http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/>


On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, STEVEN P. FISHER wrote:

>  At my institution we have had an increasing number of gifts of papers
> and/or  memorabilia to academic units rather than to the Special
> Collections/Archives.
> I would like to hear from other C & U archivists as to how they are
> dealing with this problem. We have had instances where units want us to
> house collections but insist on maintaining "ownership" of the material.
> Compounding the issue is the fact that often donors or estates are
> involved. My position has been that we will not accept material
> without a deed of gift to the Archives, not just to the institution at
> large or to another unit, but I feel I am fighting a losing battle. Does
> anyone have any policies regarding this?
>
>  Steve Fisher
>  University of Denver
>
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A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>