Special Collections guidelines

Overview

Our Special Collections focus on these key materials:

  • rare books,
  • science fiction,
  • comics,
  • medical history,
  • music,
  • rare and archival material from Southeast Asia and East Asia,
  • ephemera, and
  • food, wine and culinary history.

To learn more about each of these collections, visit our Special Collections webpage.

Since its establishment in the early 1960s, Monash University Library has developed a distinctive collection of rare and unique materials, built through donations, gifts, bequests and strategic purchases. Today, the collection spans from the 11th century to the present and includes more than 200,000 catalogued items – books, manuscripts, pamphlets, audiovisual materials, maps, posters, artworks, archival records and ephemera.

Renamed Special Collections in 2019, the collection aims to inspire curiosity and engage with the challenges facing our communities. Guided by the Library’s collection principles, it forms an important part of our cultural heritage and supports research, teaching and learning at Monash, across Australia and internationally.

Through these collections, we engage with issues such as climate change, global conflict and the experiences of diverse communities. We collaborate widely and are committed to working cooperatively, collegially and responsively. Our content, facilities, services and professional practice are guided by best practice, incorporating principles of sustainability and trauma-informed archival practice.

Collecting priorities

Special Collections acquisitions build on the unique nature of the current collection and strengthen its research value. New collecting areas respond to changing research, teaching and learning needs. They also reflect new University priorities, emerging disciplines, significant gifts or other opportunities. Collecting is selective in all areas because storage and acquisition resources are limited.

Current collecting priorities, 2024 to 2027:

  • Development of existing collections' strengths with a focus on quality rather than quantity.
  • Items with special provenance or ownership, limited editions and historic bindings.
  • Children’s literature, with a focus on fairy tales and early serials, as well as chapbooks and horn books if they are available.
  • Perspectives, histories and voices that extend and enhance the diversity of First Nations peoples and culture across our existing collections.
  • Natural history material that tells a story about the environment, particularly relating to Victoria and its national and international connections. Topics may include climate change, natural disasters and land conservation.
  • Manuscripts and archives that document people, culture, creativity and social change, with an emphasis on materials relating to Victoria or Australia. These may include personal archives or diaries that reveal significant stories, or the work of a distinguished individual demonstrating a lifetime of creativity or intellectual endeavour. Particular attention will be given to collecting underrepresented voices, including women, First Nations peoples, LGBTIQA+ communities and East Asian communities.
  • Oral recordings and interviews with collection owners or close family members that strengthen the research value of existing archives and manuscript holdings.
  • Food, wine and culinary history material acquired through the Sandy Michell Bequest, with an emphasis on expanding representation from diverse communities and emerging areas such as food trucks, refugee communities and sustainability.
  • Missing volumes or issues from key journals or magazines, and replacement of items at risk due to high use.

Out of scope

Certain categories of materials typically fall outside our collecting scope, though there may be exceptions due to the rarity or intrinsic value of an item.

  • Modern encyclopaedias, dictionaries and textbooks.
  • Material collected by the Monash University Archives (MUA).
  • Photocopies of materials, reprints or newspaper clippings.
  • Material that does not fit our identified collection and subject strengths or identified collection priority areas.
  • Materials that have questionable or unknown ownership or provenance.
  • Materials that have heavily restricted access conditions.
  • Items that are in poor condition or extremely fragile. We are limited in our capacity to apply proper conservation measures to items.
  • Materials that clearly fit at another institution or repository. The Monash University Library seeks to avoid dividing collections amongst institutions or collecting items better suited to museum or gallery collections.
  • Financial records about companies or individuals, with the exception of records pertaining to Ada Booth.
  • Widely distributed sound and video recordings, especially those on tape.
  • Uncommon or especially complex digital file formats or audiovisual material that cannot be accessed or preserved via our current technology and equipment.

Acquisition guidelines

When we consider materials for acquisition, we look at how well they align with collection priorities, their value for research and teaching, their condition, cultural significance and format. We collect a wide range of materials, including books, journals, manuscripts, slides, music scores, maps and ephemera.

Ethical collecting

Special Collections will exercise its best ethical and professional judgement in collecting cultural materials, whether by purchase, donation, gift, or bequest. We will act in accordance with the principles outlined in the Commonwealth government's Australian Best Practice Guide to Collecting Cultural Material and the International Council of Museums guidelines.

The Library commits to the following principles of ethical collecting:

  • Undertake due diligence, including provenance and ownership research, for all acquisitions.
  • Respect First Nations protocols, cultural restrictions, and sensitivities, recognising ethical responsibilities to traditional owners, including returning significant material created by or referring to First Nations people to communities where appropriate.
  • No acquisition of unlawful material, including items that may have been obtained through illegal means.
  • Confirmation of legal export, ensuring cultural material has been lawfully exported from the country of origin and any countries it passed through.
  • Maintains clear and accurate records of all acquisitions.
  • Reviews new information about items in our collections if required.
  • Cooperate with lawful authorities, agencies, and institutions to support the return of stolen materials to their rightful owners.

Equity, diversity and inclusion

Like many Special Collections around the world, our collections reflect only a small part of the creators, organisations and stories that make up our community. They have often centred around white, patriarchal, cisgender and heteronormative histories. To address this, we are working to acquire material that reflects the experiences and contributions of underrepresented groups. We are expanding our collecting to include voices across gender, race, sexuality and other forms of identity. You can read more about this commitment in the Library’s EDI Action Plan.

Physical condition

We aim to acquire material in the best physical condition possible. The Library has limited capacity to carry out conservation treatment. We may accept fragile or damaged items when their scarcity or research value justifies it.

Sustainability

We assess each item to make sure we can care for it over the long term. We acquire material with the expectation that we can preserve it and make it available for research. When we make decisions, we consider the storage, preservation and conservation needs of the item, along with the ongoing costs of these activities.

Donations

Special Collections welcomes donations of books and other cultural heritage materials that complement existing collection strengths and align with our collecting priorities. We accept single items or well-formed collections, and can accommodate periodic instalments of larger collections.

Before we accept donations, we carefully assess:

  • Fit with collecting priorities
  • Item condition
  • Pedagogical or researcher value
  • Rarity and cultural significance
  • Donation terms
  • Processing and storage costs
  • Duplication of materials already held.

After assessment, donors will need to complete our donation form and rights agreement. Donors must identify their relationship to the material, which helps confirm provenance, maintain rights agreements and access conditions, and ensure proper acknowledgment.

We cannot accept every donation or collect in every field, and our decisions reflect the Library's objectives. We can only accept materials as permanent gifts to the Library, we do not accept donations as permanent or temporary loans.

While we do not provide monetary appraisals, we can suggest independent appraisers.

Email librarians@monash.edu to begin the donation process.

Special Collections aims to make all items as discoverable and accessible as possible, while respecting the moral rights, intellectual property, cultural sensitivities and privacy of donors, individuals and creators. We ask donors to confirm the current copyright status of material. When donors hold the copyright, or have contact with the copyright owner, we seek either a transfer of rights or permission to use the material under a Creative Commons licence.

Deselection

Deaccession and disposal are part of responsible collection management and help us shape Special Collections in a sustainable way. We may offer deaccessioned material to another institution that is better suited to hold it, or transfer it to the Library’s general collection. If these options are not appropriate, the material moves into an approval process for secure disposal.

Further information