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Collection Development Policies

Information for faculty and students regarding the collection development policies of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Library

General Selection Criteria

The main criteria for acquisition are the content and the level of the books, and their relevance to the Institute's research and teaching areas. 

  • Level: Selected books must be at an academic, postgraduate or research level.
  • Language: The main languages of acquisition are English and French, but books in Spanish on Latin America are also purchased. occasionally books are selected in German or Italian. Books in English or French are usually purchased in the original language only.

Donations

The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Library gratefully accepts donations for the development of its collections. Of primary interest are potential gifts that are unique, rare and/or of significant provenance, or those that complement existing collections.
 
Due to space limitations and the cost of handling donations, the Library must be selective in what can be accepted.
 

In general, the Library will not accept the following materials:

  • Soiled, marked, worn and torn items
  • Hardback books (more than 10 years old)
  • Textbooks
  • Paperback books
  • Encyclopaedias
  • Periodicals  (Exceptions: issues that fill gaps in our current collections)
  • Working papers, reports.

Wherever possible, the donor must arrange for the material to be delivered to the Library.

Deselection

Documents that are no longer useful to the library may be discarded. The main criteria for deselection are:

  • subject not relevant to the Institute
  • non-academic level
  • obsolescence
  • physical condition
  • circulation record
  • availability online or in another Geneva library

Documents relating to the core themes of the collection, such as international law, international politics or development, are not deselected.