Skip to Main Content

Collections Acquisition: Donations

Background

MIC Library is grateful to those who have made donations and who offer unsolicited material to the Library. Many of the items accepted, ranging from individual works presented by the author to substantial collections, would not otherwise be obtained by the Library and these make an important contribution to teaching, learning and research activities at MIC.  

Conditions of Acceptance

Space constraints and the amount of staff required to record and process donations means that the Library must be selective in what can be accepted. Once a collection of donated material has been received into the Library, the Library reserves the right to deal with it as it sees appropriate.

 

Contact

Potential donors should in the first instance contact the Collections Librarian to discuss donating materials. 

Collections Librarian

Emma O'Connor

Conditions

Potential donors should be aware that MIC Library:

  • Can only consider material for inclusion if it falls within the scope of the Library Collection Management Policy;
  • Can only consider material without restrictions on subsequent location, timescale for processing or disposal;
  • Does not normally accept material in poor physical condition;
  • May be unable to accept substantial donations where funding cannot be identified in advance to pay for delivery to the Library and for subsequent cataloguing and processing;
  • Normally cannot accept duplicate items unless they constitute material identifiably in regular heavy demand, such as that on student reading lists; duplicates discovered after acceptance of collections may be compared with copies already in stock, and only the item in best condition retained;
  • Normally cannot accept back runs of periodicals that duplicate existing holdings or that are very incomplete;
  • Reserves the right to dispose of material, either at the time of receipt or subsequently;
  • Cannot guarantee to house donated items together;
  • Cannot guarantee to house donated items in a particular collection.
  • In addition, it may be necessary to decline donations of current periodical subscriptions paid for at the individual subscriber rate, where it is stated that issues are for personal use only and/or where electronic access may only be available to the individual subscriber.

Disposal of donations

  • Items which are not put into stock, may be sent to Betterworld books.
  • More details about Betterworld books can be found on their website.

Betterworld books