In general, the Library will not accept gifts of journals until further notice. However, the Library staff members may make exceptions for the following:

• Rare or valuable materials relevant to academic programs on campus or in support of existing special collections, especially photography.

• Significant runs (i.e., at least five complete years of a title) which do not duplicate UMBC holdings of journals but support academic programs or research specialties at UMBC.

Procedure to make determinations on journals offered:

1. State general guideline, but ask questions of the donor. Ask especially the donor's assessment of their general subject areas, size of runs, and how specialized. Actually, the more specialized and obscure they are the more likely they are to be useful to us, since we already have a "core" collection, but not much more.

2. If the gift appears to be largely common journals or that the runs are too small, stop the inquiry and stand pat on this guideline of non-acceptance. Do not be enticed by a gift which is largely duplicates with a only couple acceptable issues. If there is a possibility of some titles being useful, indicate to the donor that we would be interested in the categories described above, but that we would not want to take those which are largely duplicates. If it promises to be worthwhile, do a rough check over the phone comparing the titles offered against the UMBC serials holdings list or ask the donor to send a list for us to check and get back to them.

3. Agree to take only particular titles which you have identified as useful non-duplicates. If our run has gaps but their run is complete, do not accept the gift simply to fill in a few gaps.

4. Make exceptions to this guideline if you find there is good reason to do so.

guideline effective 10/23/98, reviewed 12/7/10 moskal