Donations
The Library has very gratefully received donations of published materials, artefacts, audio-visual materials, and personal correspondence since its founding. Donations have enriched our collection, and are valuable to the research of African history and scholarship.
The Library is frequently offered material as a donation, and its policy is to be selective in its acceptance due to restrictions of space and lack of suitable storage for archives. If the Library is unable to accept your intended donation, the Library may put you in touch with more appropriate collections or institutions.
In order to ascertain the suitability of the materials on offer, a list of titles with bibliographic information (author, publisher, publishing date) will be required before acceptance. For unpublished materials, a list including type (photographs, correspondence) and number of items will be required before acceptance.
If potential donations duplicate material already held within the collection, they will not usually be accepted. The donor is asked to agree that some items on further review may be passed on to other libraries or otherwise disposed of, if space does not permit them to be retained.
Once a decision has been made by the Library based on the information received, the donor will be asked to sign a deposit form for the materials.
If you are interested in donating items of a scholarly nature or of importance to the social history of Africa, please contact the Library by email.
Email:afr@lib.cam.ac.uk
African Studies Library
Alison Richard Building
7 West Road
Cambridge
CB3 9DT