Donate? Sell?

A newspaper reports that a cataloger (their spelling, I prefer cataloguer) for 35 years at the U of Southern Maine is donating his collection of 2.000 rare books to their Special Collections department.  He had been collecting for 49 years - there is no indication of his present age.  I did some arithmetic, pen to paper, and get a purchase of approximately one book a week.  Not that you can find a rare book once a week.  So much for arithmetic. 

He had the pleasure of accumulating them, and now he must be applauded for donating them.  Or must he be?   

Donate to the library where they will be locked away forever, but many people will have access to them, or -

Sell them back to the marketplace so some other passionate collector can  buy this same rare book. 

Institutions protect the books, guard them against damage, assure that the books will be preserved for the future.  This leaves fewer special books available to the collecting public, and the prices soar.  "I just got a first American edition of Euclid," a friend tells me.  He is ecstatic.  He is also rich.  He will take very, very good care of it, as he does of all his remarkable acquisitions.  And the next generation will find these again in bookstores, and share the same excitement. 

A woman who had bought many wonderfully illustrated childrens books from me said she was ready to give them up.  Excitedly, I told her I was ready to buy back this cherished collection.  She was wavering about selling.   She needed the tax credit for the donation, not the money.  The books went to her college library.

Another collector of Railroadiana told me grumpily, "I needed room on my shelves, so I donated the books to our local library.  I went back to look something up in my book, and they weren't in their Special Collections anymore.  They had sold them!  Now I don't have access to them anymore."  I asked the librarian about their policy of handling donated books.  He explained that many donated books were duplicates, or books of no interest to their cardholders, and that people expected the library to be a repository for their books while freeing up their own shelf space. "Our space is precious too.  And limited.  So we sell what we don't want.  We are not obligated to keep donated books. We're very grateful for the money we get from selling those books, money that we can use for books our patrons want."

I have subsequently found out that this is a common practice.  So there is a good chance that the book so generously donated will be out in circulation again. 

Whew.  That makes us all happy.

--Florence

Comments

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