Of the 30 library gift policy statements sampled for this research, only 8 indicated any form of donor recognition. This code analyzes the forms of recognition mentioned by those policies. The code was comprised of the following terms: Name Recognition; Receipts; and Written Letter. See Table 5.
Table 5. Donor Recognition Code
Code Term Code Definition
Number of
Hits Percentage Name
Recognition Donors will be recognized via some form of name recognition (book plates; fields in catalog records, etc.) 4/8 50% Receipts Donors will be provided with receipts 2/8 25% Written Letter Donors will receive a written letter 6/8 75%
The “Name Recognition” code term applies to those gift policies that recognize their donors via some form of name recognition, including bookplates. Examples of “Name Recognition” statements include Mississippi State University’s (n.d.) statement that “Donors can request that we add bookplates recognizing them or honoring another person to donated materials”; and the University of Georgia’s (n.d.) “Naming
Opportunities” section. Of the 8 policy statements that mention donor recognition, 4 were coded with the “Name Recognition” tag (50%), or 26.67% of the entire sample.
The “Receipts” code term was used for policy statements indicating that donors would receive receipts for their donated materials. This tag was used for Mississippi State University’s (n.d.) policy, which states that “Donors receive a receipt indicating the types and numbers of materials they have donated”; and for the University of Cincinnati-Main Campus’s (n.d.) policy, which states that, “If a gift is accepted, and a donor desires a charitable contribution receipt,” then the UC Libraries Director of Development “must
also approve the gift.” These were the only two policies to receive this tag,
making up 25% of the 8 policy statements that address donor recognition, or 6.67% of the entire sample.
Finally, the “Written Letter” code term is used for policy statements that recognize donor gifts by sending written letters. Examples include the University of California-Santa Barbara’s (2016) statement that donors who “provide a name and address” will receive an “acknowledgement letter”; and Tufts University’s (n.d.)
declaration that, “upon request” donors can receive “a letter acknowledging your gift and indicating the number of titles donated.” Of the 8 policies that make mention of donor recognition, 6 were tagged with the “Written Letter” code (75%), a figure representing 20% of the total number of library gift policy statements sampled.
Analysis
In a number of ways, my code aligns well with Bybee’s (1999) ten main areas of focus for writing library gift policy statements (though it’s important to acknowledge this may be a result of a certain amount of confirmation bias; by employing other coders, and by including coders unfamiliar with Bybee’s schema, I could have better ensured that similarities were coincidental). Among the similarities are Bybee’s “gift type,” which outlines the types of gifts actively sought by the library and aligns more or less exactly with my “Appropriate Materials” term. Additionally, his “library facts” matches with my “Historical Information”; and his “acknowledgment” matches my “Donor Recognition.”
Elsewhere, the similarities are present, but not as clean. His “processing
procedure,” “gift description,” and “services provided or not provided by the library” are reflected—though not entirely—in some combination of my terms “Evaluation,”
“Conditions/Procedures,” and “Tax/Legal Information.” Similarly, portions of his “gift philosophy statement” area—which outlines “the purpose for seeking gifts,” informs donors which kinds of gifts are needed, and enumerates the ways in which gifts might be used or disposed of (p. 21)—seem to align with a combination of my “Mission
Statement” and “Rejected Gifts” terms, though “Rejected Gifts” also seems to align with his “acceptance/right of refusal” area. Other areas, such as “solicitation” and “donor category,” aren’t part of my encoding scheme at all (an interesting omission, to be sure, though it’s difficult to tell whether this reflects current policy-writing practice or the
peculiarities of my own coding; again, employing more coders would have helped improve the significance of observations like these).
Perhaps of more interest to this study, however, are the results produced by Empey (2018). However, before beginning my comparison, it’s again important to acknowledge that I reviewed Empey’s study before beginning my own research, and it’s possible that the Empey’s method of categorizing gift policy statements may have influenced my own code. Still, I feel that a comparison is worthwhile. In Empey’s study, the author reviewed online gift policy statements for academic libraries in Canada, and, because she was interested in rewriting her own library’s gift policy, she was looking for characteristics that met her needs. However, despite the differences in approach between Empey’s research and my own, there is considerable overlap in our code—and some overlap in our results.
For example, Empey’s “Contact Information” term matches perfectly with my own “Contact Information” term, and, while Empey found that all 21 of the library webpages she surveyed “directed potential donors to an initial contact person” (p. 3), I found that a similarly high number of the policies I sampled contained this kind of information (90%). Additionally,Empey found that 15 of the 21 library webpages she sampled mentioned monetary donations (71.43%) (p. 4), while my own results were slightly higher, with 80% of my gift policy statements making mention of financial gifts.
Elsewhere, there were similarities in code, but differences in results. While Empey’s “Donation Acknowledgment” term aligns very well with my “Donor Recognition,” Empey reports that 66.67% of her sample included acknowledgement information (p. 9), whereas I found that only 26.67% of my sample contained similar
information. Additionally, despite the differences in the number of policies that included donor recognition information, there was some overlap in the kinds of recognition mentioned by both American and Canadian academic library policies. However, because of differences in our coding technique (I lumped together different kinds of name recognition, while Empey kept these categories separate) a more precise comparison would require re-coding my results.
Similarly, while there is considerable overlap between Empey’s
“Disposition/Ownership of Items” term and my own “Legal Ownership Information” term, Empey found that 17 of the 21 policies she sampled contained information regarding ownership of gifted items (80.95%) (p. 8), while I found that only 36.67% of American gift policy statements contained similar information.
In other areas, there is a fair amount of overlap in code terms, though slight differences in the term definitions makes comparison tricky. For example, Empey’s “Examples of Preferred or Unacceptable Materials” term aligns fairly well with my own “Appropriate Materials” and “Inappropriate materials,” though there is also some overlap with another my terms, “Conditions/Procedures.” Despite these similarities, however, comparison between Empey’s results and my own is made more difficult by the different ways in which we chose to track information. While Empey tracked the kinds of
materials that were or were not preferred in gift policy statements (for example, she lists 16 policies as rejecting materials that are in “poor condition” (p. 6)), she does not provide the raw number of policy statements that include this kind of information. Though it can be deduced that at least 16 libraries included information on Unacceptable Materials, and
at least 12 provided examples of Preferred Materials, the actual numbers are impossible to ascertain, and thus comparison to my own results isn’t feasible.
Additionally, there is some similarity between Empey’s “Tax Receipt Processes” term, which tracks the various ways in which libraries provide (or don’t provide) tax receipts, and my “Tax/Legal Information” term, which tracks tax and legal information more generally, but the differences are significant enough that comparison doesn’t quite make sense. (Still, the numbers are tempting: Empey found that 66.67% of her policies contained “Tax Receipt Process” information (p. 7-8), while I found that 63.33% of my gift policy statements contained information related to the taxation of gifted items.)
A similar situation is also true for Empey’s “Screening Process” term, which functions as a combination of my “Conditions/Procedures” and “Evaluation” terms. Because there is no easy way to make our terminology more completely compatible, comparison of our results isn’t possible. The same is also true of other terms, including “Cost of Appraisal” (which overlaps some, but hardly completely, with my “Tax/Legal Info” term) and “Unsolicited Gift-In-Kind Donations” (which incompletely overlaps with “Rejected Gifts.”)
Lastly, there are terms in Empey’s classification system that have no corollary in my coding. These terms include “Total Cost of Gift-in-Kind Donation,” “Cost of
Shipping,” and “Archives/Special Collection Donations,” which checked for different contact information or processes related to archival or special collection= donations (p. 9). (This category in particular was something that I noticed but didn’t think to code, and again shows the value that multiple encoders could have brought to this project, as I suspect that, with a larger team, this category would have probably surfaced.)
As far as major trends within these findings, it seems significant that
both Empey and I found that a majority of the library gift policies contained information regarding monetary gifts. If physical gifts are indeed as troublesome as the literature suggests, it would make sense that libraries would attempt to shift giving away from physical materials and toward financial donations. However, with that in mind, both my findings and Empey’s findings seem to indicate that the prevailing sentiment among academic libraries is that physical gifts do serve a useful purpose. How else to explain the number of gift policy statements that allow for some kind of physical gifts? Either
libraries are actively soliciting physical materials against their own interests, or, as a number of researchers have pointed out, gifts can be useful. (The question of how gifts are useful, and under what circumstance, is probably dependent on the individual library, and is something that could be explored in further research.)
Other important trends include the low number of American policies that mention donor recognition. When compared to Empey’s results, this seems to suggest a significant difference in practice between American and Canadian university libraries. And, if
Korolev’s (2002) assertion is true, that recognition of gift donors can serve as a reliable relationship-builder between libraries and donors, then it would seem that American university libraries may be missing out on a potentially lucrative opportunity.