Large-scale Acquisitions: The Story of Ian McLaren's Collection.

Tatarakis, Kelly

Kennedy, R., & Macauley, P. (2015). Large-scale acquisitions: The story of Ian McLaren's collection. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 46(1), 39-51. doi:10.1080/00048623.2014.1003166

 Summary:

            This 12 page article begins with a narrative of Ian F. McLaren and his private book collecting habits in the mid-1900's. His private library collection of primarily Australiana works were then acquired by the Baillieu Library as a special collection in 1976. The authors use this historical account to examine large-scale special collection and donation acquisitions, discuss the inherent problems in housing, maintaining, and cataloging the materials (particularly over extended periods of time), and suggest standard practices for libraries in general. Libraries need to be cautious during negotiations that they are not limiting their future freedom with the collection, and make sure terms for future management are clear to both parties during the initial acquisition.

            The authors state that the value of acquiring private library collections is in the whole of a collection rather than individual items. Many times the significance of a special collection lies primarily in the "celebrity" nature of the original collector, such as a prime minister, or in their specific subject focus (Kennedy & Macauley 2015). These types of large-scale acquisitions, according to the authors, have much more an element of chance than in acquiring items from publishers; there may be many less significant individual items in a collection, and the donor or seller must be negotiated with. Sellers and donors will often have reasons behind giving up their personal collections, such as taxes, storage, and management difficulties, wanting to make the collection more available to the public, and not having the collection burden inheritors after death.

            Institutions will also need to decide whether it would be of more use to break up the collection, sell or auction it off individually or as a whole, or keep the collection together as part of their own library. Staff time and maintenance costs must be factored into how these acquisitions are dealt with. Having policies in place to deal with large-scale donations by assessing the collection and planning for either keeping or selling it will help reduce these difficulties. Policies for negotiating with a seller will be similar but have some different needs to address.

Evaluation:

            I found this article very informative. Large-scale acquisitions of special collections, private libraries, and donations are not the first thing that springs to mind when considering collection development, but certainly significant and worth studying. This article provides and in-depth view of how the Ian McLaren special collection was acquired and then managed over time, which helps illustrate the issues involved in general for large-scale acquisitions. This article, in my opinion, is very good supplementary reading for a Collection Development class.