Severe limitations in labor capacity, paired with the fact that, thanks to the size and depth of our existing collections, we tend to already own most items being offered, mean that the Library must be extremely circumspect when entertaining donations. Before reaching out about donating materials, please be aware of the following policies:
We cannot physically bring materials into the Library unless we fully intend to add them to our collections. This means that we cannot accept unsolicited donations. If an individual, say, drops off a box of books at the Library’s Information Services desk, those books will be summarily disposed of.
We cannot accept duplicates. If U-M Libraries already own a given book, or even if we can quickly get a book through interlibrary loan, we are prohibited from taking in another copy of that same title.
We MUST receive an itemized inventory. A list recording the basic bibliographic information (Author. Title. Place of Publication: Publisher, year of publication. ISBN, if available) of every item being offered allows us to search those items against our existing holdings. This enables us to avoid the above prohibitions and identify only those items that will be new to our collections. Again, please be advised that, in most cases, we are ultimately only able to accept a tiny fraction of the materials folks would like to give us.
If the conditions above are agreeable, and you’d like to proceed with offering a donation, please reach out to Brendan Nieubuurt directly at bnieubuu@umich.edu.
