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Re: Acquistion Review Committees



Our library has a Collections Development Committee which
ostensibly reviews gifts to the Library, however these tend to
be large donations, say a gift of a library of Beethoven biographies.
We considered, for a time, of including "outside" faculty on the
committee -- that is, members drawn from the University faculty
body who are not part of the library.

Ultimately we rejected doing this because (1) analysis of such
gifts required a much broader level of expertise of the entire
library collections; and (2) we decentralized collection review
to the subject experts.   For example, while the policy could be
read that the committee would review whether to accept every
archives collection offered to Special Collections, the reality is
that the policy delegates this responsibility to the Special
Collections Librarian who knows more about what is in the
collection and its quality/quantity/depth than other librarians.

On the one hand, it is nice to involve others in what you do,
but the question has to be to what purpose?   If the museum
were offered a stupendous collection of "beanie babies," I
could see the museum staff saying "no" ... but an outside
trustee might say, "great, this will draw the kids in and is
so timely and cool!"

I'm almost sorry I used that last example.  Now I'll lay awake
at nights wondering if museums and archives are accessioning
beanie babies  (e.g. the Bill Gates Beanie Baby Wing of the
Smithsonian).


Dean

Dean DeBolt
University Librarian
Special Collections and West Florida Archives
John C. Pace Library
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL  32514-5750
Tele:  850-474-2213;   Fax:  850-474-3338

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