Reply #19: you could mention to the donor that you saw "someone" carting stuff off [View All]

[Lisa]

It may be that the person who left the items doesn't really care about the tax receipt (though if s/he is on a limited income, that could be of some help). But it does serve as a reminder that things can "go missing" if left unattended. You don't have to give the name of the neighbor you saw doing it, if you're concerned about neighborhood conflicts.

I had an interesting situation the other day. Over the past couple of years, I've been donating DVDs to my public library. As usual, the place is severely underfunded and since it's in a low-income neighborhood, a lot of people depend on it for seeing movies they otherwise might not get a chance to view. The chief librarian and I are friends, so I've been collaborating with her on title choices. I finally got around to making up a list of ones I've donated (they've offered to issue a tax receipt but I've declined, since even though I could sometimes use a tax break, I've decided I want to pay my full share instead ... which should address the concerns another poster brought up). Anyway, I discovered during my inventory that several hard-to-get DVDs never made it through cataloguing. I notified my librarian friend, since it appears that they were mainly left-leaning films (John Sayles's "Matewan", some anti-war documentaries, etc.) -- I can always order replacements, though it means some hassle and more expense for me. But I figured she should know about things disappearing, since they were ones she'd asked for specifically. I gave her a duplicate copy of one of them at a later date, and it's got a long waiting-list, so it's not a case of the cataloging staff turfing it because it wasn't a popular item.

Anyway, I'm glad I decided to tell her. It's not something anyone's going to be fired over, even if people are skimming from the donation pile (or making censorship decisions about the collection, which is what she was most concerned about). But we've now worked out a special system for getting the DVDs to her directly, and she will expedite them through cataloguing. (This may solve the problem.)