Slides (Link to Linfield College IR)Many librarians have a love-hate relationship with gift donations. Gifts can be a welcome source of material for a library’s collection and can provide great public relations opportunities for libraries, but their associated costs – including the amount of time it takes to review and process donations – are very real. Is accepting gifts worth the effort, or is it time to send the proverbial gift horse packing? This session seeks to engage attendees in discussion about a variety of issues pertaining to gift donations. Sample discussion topics might include: How do you handle an onslaught of donations at the same time with minimal staffing? What do you do when non-library staff tell donors one thing but your professional judgment says you should do otherwise? Which strategies for reducing donation backlogs seem to work best? How do you assess donations in areas for which you have limited (or even no) familiarity? Attendees will leave the session with ideas for alternate approaches to handling gifts, examples of gift policies they can reference when crafting or refining their own institutions’ policies, and ways to incorporate student workers into their local workflows for gift donations.
