Dorothy Smith:

>As a former librarian, I was of course interested in the question of
>why librarians often look askance at gifts.... I suspect the reason is
>that acquisition librarians spend most of their time reading reviews so
>that they may select the best purchases for their libraries.

Would that we had the time for that!

>Librarians will also tell you that nothing can be added to the collection
>for free; there is a considerable cost involved just in getting it ready
>for the shelf.

True.  Both space and time cost a fortune.  Small and large libraries both
have limited space and limited staff.  I am in the business of accepting
gifts for a university library and it is all I can do to get the music
librarian to accept any vinyl records for these reasons, among others.
(CDs always welcome.) Good physical condition does count for a lot, but
we were given a collection of thousands of records through a bequest which
it would have been churlish to turn down, and which included many mint
condition recordings by Gieseking, among other items.  As it turned out, we
already had everything in the whole collection with the exception of a very
small number of items, but it took a lot of time just to find that out.

Jim Tobin