Re: DUPLICATES SALES

[Guenter Kroll <G.Kroll@stub.uni-frankfurt.de>]

Let me join the discussion with a contribution coming from practice: As a 
manuscripts librarian I have to do a lot with these collections, and we 
only keep a small number of special collections fitting in our 'profile', 
i.e. Francofurtensia. These few collections nevertheless make a lot of 
work the day there's somebody decided to look at them for research. 
This and the small resources, financial and in manpower, may be the 
reasons why our directors rather decline 10 offers of new collections 
before they take one. So, I can understand collectors that make up their 
mind not to give anything to libraries and I understand libraries that 
don't take everything. And we are n o t allowed to sale duplicates 
(unless the tenth or twentieth copy from the students library), so we try 
not to make duplicates. 
Don't take me responsible for this practice, I'm only a 3rd degree 
librarian. But I have to see from my own responsibilities that even our 
few collections sometimes cannot be used because we haven't managed to 
put them in a catalogue since years and decades. And for what reason 
should we collect something that cannot be used by readers?  

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| Guenter Kroll                                         | 
| Handschriftenabteilung/Manuscripts Collection         | 
| Stadt- und Universitaetsbibliothek                    |
| Frankfurt am Main, Germany                            |    
| E-Mail: g.kroll@stub.uni-frankfurt.de                 |              
| Tel: +49 69 21239250                                  |       
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