Re: LIBRARY DUPLICATE SALES

[golden vincent louis <v-golden@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>]

Working with gifts and book sales, I have had to deal with this issue 
before.  I always try to inform the donor the procedures including the 
selling of unwanted duplicate materials carefully including the reasoning 
behind it.  We do not sell deaccessioned materials (we try to place 
anything special or important in other libraries).

However, I still run into the donor who thinks he/she knows more about 
how the library should be run, how decisions should be made, what the 
procedures should be, etc. than the library itself.  I do my best to 
explain how we do things and why.  But sometimes, you just can't satisfy 
everyone.  I have had donors decide not to give collections for various 
reasons.  One included a family who wanted a special named room so the 
collection could be kept separate and not circulate.  We explained how we 
could not do this, and so they decided to look for another institute who 
would.

Sometimes the emotional value to a collector clashes with the research 
value to a library.

Vincent Golden
University of Illinois Library