Acquisition Through Gifts/Donations:

Gifts and donations constitute an important source acquisition of reading materials in a library. Many a library has benefited enormously by accepting gifts and donations. Perhaps, it is a good practice to solicit  gifts and donations. However, one must be careful in accepting them as it  may cause administrative problems involving the procedure of acceptance, technical processing, placement, and maintenance. In addition, cost of maintenance should be considered before accepting gifts. Generally, individuals bequeath their personal collections. While some may not put conditions, others do. For example, they may insist that all documents (irrespective of whether they are useful or not) should  be accepted and also that they should be placed as a special collection. This may not be acceptable to the library concerned due to:

i) Irrelevance of some documents to the subjects of interest of the institution. 

ii) Difficulty in maintaining as a  separate collection as merging with the general collection is more helpful. 

iii) Space considerations. 

iv)  Financial considerations, like cost of maintenance, etc. 

Thus, the librarian should make it clear to the donor, right at the beginning, that he is willing to accept the gift collection only and only if he is given a free hand to take decisions - of integrating  into the general collection, discarding, exchanging, etc.,  - regarding its use or otherwise. Hence,  it is suggested that every library should formulate a policy regarding acceptance or rejection of gifts. In addition to personal collections, there are unpriced publications distributed free by many agencies. These also come under the category of gifts. Hence, it is necessary that the librarian be vigilant enough to observe and request for such publications. To ensure that  he does not  miss such  announcements, the librarian should  write requesting that the name of his institution be put on the mailing list of these agencies.