Large-scale Acquisitions: The Story of Ian McLaren's Collection

This article uses the case of the McLaren Collection at the University of Melbourne Baillieu Library Special Collections as a starting point to examine the issue of large-scale acquisitions in libraries. The McLaren Collection is a significant collection of 34,000 books, papers, pamphlets and journals of Australiana that was acquired by the Baillieu Library in 1976. Examining the issues surrounding the purchase and integration of the collection illustrates a number of considerations that libraries need to be aware of when making decisions about large-scale acquisitions. These include the possible motivations of the seller or donor, the terms of the contract negotiated, the cost of processing the collection once it has been acquired and the ongoing issues associated with managing the collection over time. It is not the goal of this article to offer definitive instruction on how libraries should approach the possibility of a large-scale acquisition, but rather to raise issues and considerations that will help librarians make informed decisions throughout this process. Information in this article was sourced from personal experience working with the collection, and from piecing together information from the available documentation. The story of the McLaren Collection provides a thought-provoking demonstration of the way that these factors played out in one example, and illustrates of some of the challenges presented by the acquisition of an established collection.