[Publib] Donations: Blessing or Curse?

[Miriam Bobkoff]

Tom Cooper wrote:

> > > I'd like to gather a little anecdotal input for something I'm thinking
> > > about writing. Do you think that donations (and here I'm talking
> > > specifically about materials donated to the library, not money) are a
> > > blessing, or a curse -- or somewhere in between?

Blessing mostly, in my experience, but this was some years ago. When 
I was working with the donated books at my former place of work, I 
figured we kept m-a-a-a-y-b-e-e 5% of the donations, and that 
one-in-20-or-less fraction amounted to thousands of books per year. 
We were able to do that because the Friends of the Library took 
possession of -- to sell or dump -- whatever the collection didn't 
need. They did the hard part; we just had the fun of winnowing the 
boxes and keeping things the collection needed.

What we kept to put in the collection was of great value in serving 
the needs of the library users, in part because the same population, 
with the same array of tastes and desires, was buying those items and 
eventually donating them. They knew what they and their neighbors wanted.

(This is embarrassing, but I don't see how I can answer this question 
at all if I don't mention that ten years ago I wrote a somewhat 
idyllic description of Santa Fe Public Library's (then) gift book 
operation for _Public Libraries_. November/December 1999, "A 
Bookworm's-Eye View of Collection Development: Making Use of Gift Books".)

Miriam Bobkoff
these days helping out in the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Library
in Port Angeles, WA