Opportunities for Giving

We are currently revising our policy regarding donations of gifts in kind. For further information, please contact:

Jane Philipps, Coordinator of Collection Development
Telephone: 533-3040    Email: jane.philipps@queensu.ca
Room: Stauffer Library, Room 015 (Lower Level)

or

Ainslie Thomson, Senior Collections Assistant
Telephone: 533-6000, ext. 78448    Email: thomsona@queensu.ca
Room: Stauffer Library, Room 016 (Lower Level)
[ Gifts in Kind | Donation Procedures | Book Plates & Memorials | Income Tax Benefits ]

The library of a research university is a great and constantly growing resource. We are very proud of Queen's library collections and services. Today, Queen's provides students and researchers 2,000,000 printed volumes; about 14,000 serials subscriptions; 3,700,000 microforms, thousands of maps and audio-visual materials; and a growing range of electronic reference tools.

But no library is ever complete. The Queen's libraries must continue to grow. And your donation could help us meet the ever-increasing demand for information resources. You can specify that you want your donation to support a particular area of the collection, such as health sciences, education, law, science, applied science, social science or the humanities.

We welcome donations of any amount. And Queen's is a registered organization able to provide income-tax receipts. The following are examples of how your donation could help us support the work of our students and faculty:

• $50 would support the acquisition of one book in a humanities or social sciences field;
• $200 would support the acquisition of one book in a science field;
• $1,000 to $10,000 would support the purchase of a reference tool such as a dictionary, encyclopedia, or the addition of a multi-volume set.

Support for serial collections would require a much larger donation. Since these publications have to be paid for each year, we need donations large enough so that we can invest the capital and pay for each year's issues out of the interest. Increasingly, we are acquiring journals as part of multi-title, electronic packages rather than as individual print subscriptions. For example:

• interest of $10,000 each year would support Project Muse ( a collection of 150 humanities and social science journals) or The Oxford English Dictionary Online (the famous English dictionary which originally appeared in 23 volumes and has now been published in a brand new edition that will be updated with 1,000 new words each year);
• interest of $20,000 each year would support PsycArticles (full text in electronic form of all articles in journals published by the American Psychological Association);
• interest of $50,000 each year would support ABI Inform (the premier index to business journals which also provides many of the indexed journals in electronic format);
• interest of $100,000 each year would support IE Library (a package of journals, proceedings of conferences, etc. which forms the essential resource for scholars in electrical engineering and computing) or SciFinder Scholar (an electronic version of Chemical Abstracts that includes many improved features making this tool much easier to use than the print version).

Donations of Books

If you have books you think we might be able to use, please contact one of the people listed below:

• To find out more about general policies relating to gifts or for books in humanities, fine arts, social science, physical and applied science please contact Ainslie Thomson, Senior Collections Assistant; e-mail: thomsona@queensu.ca; tel. (613) 533-6000, ext. 748448.
• For books on primary or secondary education, education policy, etc., please contact Corinne Laverty, Head, Education Library, McArthur College of Education; email: lavertyc@queensu.ca; tel. (613) 533-6000, ext. 77075.
• For books on any of the health or medical sciences, please contact Anne Smithers, Head, Technical Services/Document Delivery, Bracken Library; email: smithers@queensu.ca; tel. (613) 533-6000, ext. 74530.
• For law materials, please contact Nancy McCormack, Head, William R. Lederman Law Library; e-mail: nm4@queensu.ca; tel. (613) 533-2465.

Archival materials range from the manuscripts and typewritten or electronic originals of literary works through individual letters and accumulated correspondence, to extensive files of ledgers, documents, architectural drawings, and business or public records. If you are thinking of a donation of this kind, please contact the University Archivist, Paul Banfield; email: banfield@queensu.ca; tel. (613) 533-2378. Queen's faculty members and alumni are particularly invited to discuss with the University Archivist the donation of their papers and the manuscripts of their works.

How We Proceed With Donations of Books

The Library follows the policies and procedures established by the University for dealing with donations. Gifts, like all other materials, must be considered for their value to the development of the collections. We must also take into account the cost of processing a gift and adding it to the collection. We reserve the right to refuse offers of material that does not match our need. We may be able to suggest other ways of disposing of such collections. The following are some kinds of material we do not collect:

• textbooks
• mass-market paperbacks
• offprints of journal articles
• material in poor condition or containing mould
• material that contains highlighting, underlining, or annotations (unless we can prove the annotations are by a famous author!)
• issues of newspapers (though we might want some 19th-century issues of Kingston and Eastern Ontario newspapers if they have never been microfilmed)

Donors can assist us by consulting the appropriate person listed above before presenting books. The library staff will gladly examine a list or catalogue of the material offered. In some cases, it may be preferable to make special arrangements for library staff to examine a collection in person.

In order that library materials may be organized for most effective use, books are normally added to the regular library stack collections. It is rarely practicable to maintain gifts as separate collections. Individual items may be routed to Special Collections if they prove on examination to be rare, of special bibliographic significance, or to have special association value.

Donor Acknowledgement & Recognition

Our normal form of recognition is a note added to the online catalogue record for each donated item. Major gifts in kind may be identified by a specially designed book plate at the choice or undertaking of the donor. Gift items may also be designated as memorials to an individual, and a suitable acknowledgement will be made to next-of-kin when appropriate.

Income Tax Benefits

Gifts to Queen's University, both of funds and of library materials, may be eligible for tax credits. Revenue Canada requires that donors complete a simple "donor declaration form" and that an evaluation of the donation be done by a person recognized as knowledgeable about book prices. Library staff who have developed expertise in this area can evaluate material worth up to $4999.

Donations worth over that amount require a written evaluation by an independent third party with experience in valuing the kind of material in question. An income tax receipt can cover only material which the Library plans to add to its collection. We can suggest names of book dealers or other competent persons to make evaluations.

Owing to the cost of preparing the paperwork and evaluations for income-tax receipts, we will now normally provide receipts only for material valued over $100, and only one income-tax receipt per donor per year. Since we will try to complete income-tax receipts during the year in which material is presented, we will normally avoid accepting any offers of material during December.