Well… It Was A Nice Thought

I was a subject librarian at a university. I received an email from a professor who had recently retired from another school and moved to our city. He wanted to donate decades worth of books and journals to the library.

This sort of thing is often a LOT more trouble than it is worth since much of the material will be old, duplicate, or online, but some of the stuff he described sounded good, and frankly, he might be someone willing to donate money to the university in the future if we built a relationship. Also, he understood and didn’t mind that much of the material would end up being discarded, so it seemed like it would be worth the trouble of a few months of sorting through the material.

Being a cautious soul, I checked all of this with the collection management librarian, the dean, and probably half a dozen others. Everyone agreed that it seemed like a reasonable decision and gave me the go-ahead.

I contacted the professor.

Me: “I have the approval to accept the gift. Where are the materials?”

Professor: “In my old house in [State halfway across the country].”

None of us had thought to ask that. The library had to pay for shipping.