Starting in July 2022, we will begin collecting materials for the archive. Materials can be transferred to the College of Staten Island library in several ways:
- Bring items to the Positive Exposure Gallery at 14 East 109th Street in Manhattan (between 5th and Madison),
- Bring items to the College of Staten Island library,
- Arrange an appointment for pick-up.
Please fill out this short form to describe the materials you would like to contribute and the collection method that works best for you.
The project coordinator will follow up with you to schedule an appointment for transfer of materials. They will also create a receipt of items and a Deed of Gift form before meeting.
Deed of Gift Explanation
The purpose of the Deed of Gift is to assist Special Collections and Archives staff in determining your decisions as a donor and establishes legal ownership of the material.
Completing each section of the Deed of Gift form provides us with the following information:
- Name and contact information
- A brief description of the material that you have deposited. This portion of the Deed of Gift form is usually filled out in consultation with Special Collections and Archives staff. Please do not rearrange or edit paper or digital files without discussing such changes with us. It is preferable for the original organization of materials to be maintained. If there are sensitive personal or financial details in the materials, please address this in section 4 (Access to the Collections).
- How you acquired ownership of the material.
- Your decision regarding the assignment of copyright to the Special Collections and Archives. Under law, any items that you or your ancestors have written are your literary property. If a researcher uses materials held by the Special Collections and Archives Department and wishes to include a quote or image, etc., from your collection in a publication, he/she must first ask your permission if you are the holder of copyright. For many researchers, this procedure is a time-consuming one. As time goes on, a particular problem arises in determining the current heirs holding the copyright to materials donated years before. In order to facilitate the process of research, we ask that donors assign the copyright to the Special Collections and Archives to save donors the time and effort of responding to future individual requests to quote from items in your collection, and to make the materials in your collection as available as possible. If you wish to retain copyright of your material, please consider conveying the following rights to the College of Staten Island: permission for researchers to use reproductions for publications or other works governed by Fair Use guidelines, and permission Special Collections and Archives use of materials to promote programs and services.
- Your decisions regarding access. We strive to make all of our collections open and available for research use. At the same time, we recognize that it might be appropriate that some items be closed to research use for a specified period of time. We ask that you make known your decisions in this regard. Special Collections and Archives staff will be glad to advise you about the types of restrictions we can administer. By signing the Deed of Gift form agreement, we also ask that you permit us to make reproductions of the materials that are open for research use.
- Your decision regarding unwanted material. Not every item in a collection is of sufficient historical value to warrant the cost of permanent retention. Because of our limited space and the increasing size of historical collections, Special Collections and Archives staff must review the contents of each collection to determine what material is of a truly substantive nature and what items are routine and duplicative. We may also make reformatting decisions to reproduce information stored on a deteriorating medium, and discard the original (this is most often the case when acidic newspaper articles are copied onto acid-free paper, though this may also occur when audio visual materials are digitized and the original recording format can no longer be played). Such redundant or unusable material is then separated from the material being retained. Through the Deed of Gift form agreement, we ask that you guide us in what we may do with the material we choose to separate from your collection.
