Building Judaica Collections Through Gifts in Kind

Abstract

University of Maryland Libraries’ Judaica collections have been built in part with donations and purchases of second hand collections from private individuals and larger institutions. In a little over ten years it has grown from a relatively small Judaica collection to one of the largest in the Mid-Atlantic Region, second only to the Library of Congress. These donated and purchased materials pose numerous challenges in the realms of preservation, cataloging and collection management. This paper will examine these issues and the ways in which the University of Maryland Judaica librarians work to resolve these issues from the cataloging and the collection management perspectives.