{"id":4279,"date":"2022-08-09T05:22:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T10:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/?p=4279"},"modified":"2022-08-09T22:33:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T03:33:24","slug":"word-of-the-week-deed-of-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/2022\/08\/09\/word-of-the-week-deed-of-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Deed of Gift?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dictionary Working Group of the Society of American Archivists keeps me abreast of archival vocabulary through their email service.\u00a0 The latest installment is a term–Deed of Gift<\/a>— I use and define for our patrons and donors on a weekly basis.\u00a0 Click here for more<\/a> and to subscribe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

SAA has a very nice brochure<\/a> explaining Deeds of Gift. This paragraph, I think, is especially useful:<\/p>\n

Donors of historical materials<\/strong>\u00a0are individuals or organizations that give materials to repositories, including historical societies, archives, or special collections libraries. Donated materials often include papers, records, and digital material documenting personal lives and family history or the history of organizations such as businesses, community associations, and religious groups. Repositories are administered by professional archivists, curators, or librarians, who assemble these materials, preserve them, and make them available for research. The relationship between you\u2014as a donor\u2014and a repository must be based on a common understanding of your wishes and the ability of the repository to carry out its mission and responsibilities. You should review the materials being offered for donation with the archivist or curator and discuss the repository\u2019s policies and procedures for the care and use of donated materials. Most repositories have a collecting policy that informs their decisions about what they can accept. If both parties agree that the repository is an appropriate place for preservation of the materials, then both parties sign a deed of gift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We use deeds of gift for all incoming archival collections.\u00a0 Archival collections are by nature unique and unpublished.\u00a0 They are often wholly the product of the donor’s creative work, though sometimes they will contain items that were published or widely disseminated.\u00a0 But by and large they are privately created.\u00a0 For this reason we execute deeds of gift which govern the transfer of custody and ownership of the physical objects along with accompanying intellectual property rights. We do not use deeds of gift for donations of published materials such as books or periodicals.<\/p>\n

Here is the sample deed of gift I give to prospective donors: Deed of Gift_SAMPLE<\/a><\/p>\n

My basic assumption is that we will only add archival collections that directly relate to our central collecting foci.\u00a0 Part of building an excellent archive in a chosen area is locating and saying ‘yes’ to the right kinds of collections.\u00a0 The corollary is saying ‘no’ to the wrong kinds of collections.\u00a0 Preserving the right kinds of collections is our core mission.\u00a0 So if I am talking with donors about deeds of gift, I am already talking about collections of materials that are candidates for permanent preservation<\/em>.\u00a0 So, executing a deed of gift facilitates our work in preserving them permanently.\u00a0 When we say ‘yes’ we are in it for the long haul: significant investment of several kinds of resources, and we will only do that for collections which we own.\u00a0 To do otherwise is poor stewardship of our resources.\u00a0 As I describe this for our donors, I like to stress that this small bit of paperwork facilitates access: it governs us as we receive collections, holds us accountable to preserve them, and enables us to make these valuable materials available for scholarly research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dictionary Working Group of the Society of American Archivists keeps me abreast of archival vocabulary through their email service.\u00a0 The latest installment is a term–Deed of Gift— I use and define for our patrons and donors on a weekly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[137581,213833],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives-and-archiving","category-deed-of-gift"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4fxGI-171","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4279"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4291,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions\/4291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}