Well said. In addition, small synagogue libraries like mine tend to become the repositories of many donated books that should really be trashed (yellowed, water damaged, terribly outdated, etc) but people feel that they just can't throw out a book and leave it to the library to do so. I've often found shopping bags of books dropped off anonymously despite my policy of requesting a list of titles. Usually the books all end up either in the trash or being donated to one of the booksales run by local nonprofits. It's really time consuming for a volunteer librarian to have to cull through this stuff in hopes of finding one or two good donations.
Aileen Grossberg Lampert Library Congregation Shomrei Emunah Montclair, NJ -----Original Message----- From: Deborah Stern <dst...@rrc.edu> To: Hasafran <Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu> Sent: Wed, Aug 1, 2012 11:37 am Subject: Re: [ha-Safran] "I have some old Jewish books. What can I do with them?" Unfortunately in smaller libraries, including many synagogue libraries, the items we are offered are not of the caliber that Yaffa and Zachary mention and I have found people will not comply when I ask them for a list of the books. A few have actually photographed the books, which does help. And libraries like mine and SSC libraries are not set up to deal with rare materials or ephemera, and it’s not our mission to collect such materials. I also run a continuous book sale, but in the end if the books don’t sell then we’ve taken the responsibility to dispose of them. So it’s often a fine balancing act regarding donations. Debbie Stern, Library Director Mordecai M. Kaplan Library Reconstructionist Rabbinical College From: hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Weisman, Yaffa Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 7:17 PM To: Zachary M Baker; Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: [ha-Safran] "I have some old Jewish books. What can I do with them?" To second Zachary’s approach: I spent a 3 months sabbatical last spring going over 18,000 items offered by an executor of a secular Jewish scholar’s library, who’s main interest was political science. Turns out that his father (New York, Portland, Toronto and Santa Monica) and grandfather (Lithuania) were scholar rabbis, avid readers and activists in the Jewish community – and he had their libraries as well. I ended up adding no more than 300 BOOKS to our collection, but the EPHEMERA that reflected Jewish life in their communities was priceless and was placed in the rare and special collections of our library. And feeding the nosey treasure hunter in me is an added bonus… Dr. Yaffa Weisman, Director The Frances-Henry Library Adjunct Associate Professor HUC-JIR Jack H. Skirball Los Angeles Campus www.huc.edu/libraries/la 213-765-2170 From: hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Zachary M Baker Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 1:47 PM To: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu Subject: [ha-Safran] "I have some old Jewish books. What can I do with them?" My instinct is to resist these types of invitations, but (to quote the old New York State Lottery slogan) hey, you never know. We certainly don't want to accumulate massive numbers of duplicates that become _our_ problem (or Gifts and Exchanges' problem), instead of the donor's. On the other hand, if donors can provide lists that we can select from, that is helpful. (One of the first questions I ask, when offered a book donation, is, May we be selective?) Or, if we have a sense that the donor had intellectual interests that might result in significant additions to our research collections, by all means let's pursue the matter. My favorite example involved the library of a deceased scholar of Hungarian Jewry, whose books on the subject greatly enriched the holdings of the YIVO Library. I enjoyed meeting and chatting with the late scholar's widow (an artist) as well. And sometimes one encounters unexpected -- and welcome -- surprises. A couple of years ago an acquaintance invited me to look over her father's books. He had died a year or so earlier and the daughter was cleaning out his house. I went there with not very high expectations and indeed the Judaica books on the living-room shelves were fairly slim pickings. But then I went into the garage and encountered a treasure trove of "gray literature": vintage publications -- in Hebrew and English -- devoted to soil science, agricultural development, and water resources in Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s. This is precisely the sort of special collections material that we are collecting at Stanford. The 1950s-era Israeli children's magazines were a bonus. (My acquaintance's father had trained as a soil scientist and lived with his family on an Israeli kibbutz back then.) Hey, you never know... Zachary M. Baker Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections Stanford University __ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
__ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
