General Collections Gifts Policy

Scope: Policy statement on general collections gifts-in-kind

Contact: Elena Feinstein

Units: Collection Strategy & Development

Date created: 06/30/2025

Date last reviewed: 06/30/2025

Gift materials incur significant costs in terms of processing capacity, crucial shelving space, and ongoing maintenance and preservation. In order to ensure that our practices are sustainable and to direct resources toward achieving our current collection development goals, Duke University Libraries will not accept gifts of materials for the general collection.

The only circumstances under which gifts will be added to the general collection are as follows.

• The gift is a planned component of collection development, which must be approved by Heads of Collection Strategy & Development, relevant discipline group, and relevant acquisitions department. Planned collection development gifts comprise:

  • Approved subscriptions or ongoing orders that we receive without paying. These must meet the same relevance criteria used to evaluate paid orders and not be available as a regular paid acquisition.

  • Approved one-time gifts of materials that map to Collections of Distinction. These must be evaluated as appropriate in scale and scope, and be determined feasible to process, describe, preserve, and make accessible.

• The gift is brokered by Development or authorized by the University Librarian or AUL for Collections Services, as part of donor relationship building.

Collection Strategy & Development is the sole unit responsible for selection of general collections gifts, as well as handling related donor communication and documentation.

Potential gifts of rare and unique materials will be reviewed by curators in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. See Donating Materials to the Rubenstein Library for more information.

Add updates below as the policy is applied and clarified through use.