Transferring Your Collection

Negotiating and signing the deed of gift

Once you have decided on an institutional home for your collection, you can begin the process of negotiating the terms on which you will donate the materials. Before doing so, you may want to have an on-site monetary appraisal done by a professional appraiser while consulting with an accountant or attorney. This step is important because your donation may be eligible for tax deductions. Archivists and curators cannot provide a monetary appraisal for you, only a professional appraiser can. Most archival repositories either cannot or will not pay for collections and usually rely on donations.

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You can also ask an attorney about whether it may be best to deposit or loan your collection to a repository. Depositing means you will transfer your records without transferring the title, or ownership, while loaning a collection indicates a temporary transfer of materials. Some institutions have started using post-custodial transfer agreements, where donors can trust the repository with storage and preservation while retaining ownership of their materials. The University of Texas Libraries has been using this model for their Human Rights Documentation Initiative. While this is a new practice, it’s important to remember as an option that some institutions may have.

Next, you will agree on terms with the institution through a deed of gift, or contract, that transfers the ownership of the collection and covers the

  • collection scope,
  • ownership,
  • intellectual rights,
  • transfer schedule,
  • archives’ rights,
  • payment for shipping,
  • and more.

Any refusals or removals of the collection will be indicated in this contract along with a plan for either disposing of or returning materials that are rejected by the institution.

Here, you can place restrictions on access and use, especially if there are any confidential records such as student records, tax documents, medical records, legal papers, and more. Often, repositories have their own policies on dealing with sensitive data and documents that reveal personal identifying information such as social security and bank account numbers. While archivists strive to provide as much access as possible to their collections, you can come to an agreement if you choose to restrict access. This can be done on a term basis, meaning that restrictions would expire based on how much time has passed, the death of a named person, or other terms.

Another important aspect of this agreement has to do with copyright and deciding who ultimately owns the material being donated. Copyright dictates who is in control of the reproduction, publication, adaptation, exhibition, or performance of the work collected. Usually, this set of legal rights controlling use of the materials belongs to the creator of the materials, but ownership can also be transferred to family members or others through a will and testament. Ownership of copyright is not the same as ownership of the physical, material items. However, archivists usually prefer for copyright ownership to be transferred to their repository so that researchers may publish their work without having to obtain permissions for use of the materials. More information on copyright laws can be found here.

Once you’ve settled on the terms of your donation, you can begin transferring your collection to its new home.

Preparing to transfer your collection

When preparing your collection for transfer to a repository, and afterwards during processing as needed, you may be asked to help identify the people documented in it or the context in which items were made. This will allow archivists to accurately process your collection and make it as discoverable and accessible as possible.

In the process of digital transfers of material on computers, disks, or other digital storage software, it is important to remember that there may be passwords, browsing history, other user files, or copies of deleted files remaining. Also, as technology continues to advance quickly, digital storage is always changing, so if you have specific questions about digital archives and their transfers, you should contact the archivist at your chosen repository.

If you feel so inclined, and/or are able to do so, you can make a monetary donation to the repository now housing your collection to help with its preservation and accessibility.

This resource was first created by Jehoiada Calvin (f.k.a. T Calvin), BMRC Community Engagement Archivist, in 2020, and edited by him in 2022.