The study looks at budget satisfaction, collecting priorities, donor solicitation, donation acceptance, donor negotiation, development-office communication, and the staffing and space needed to support new acquisitions.
The report finds that acquisitions policy is relatively formalized, but implementation is constrained by money, space, staffing, and donor-management complexity. 65.38% of respondents maintain a formal special collections acquisitions policy, while another 19.23% have one in revision; only 7.69% report no formal policy.
Spending on acquisitions is highly unequal. The mean acquisitions spend in the past year was $61,200, but the median was only $4,000, with a range from $0 to $800,000. Research universities reported a mean of $99,833.33, compared with only $3,250 among all other institutions.
Budget satisfaction is weak. Only 34.61% are satisfied or very satisfied with their acquisitions budget, while the same share, 34.61%, are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. The largest institutions are especially dissatisfied, with 33.33% dissatisfied and 33.33% very dissatisfied.
The leading acquisition priorities are rare books and university archives, each ranked first by 26.92% of respondents, followed by manuscripts, ranked first by 19.23%. Most institutions solicit donor materials at least sometimes: 30.77% do so actively and 46.15% sometimes.
Donor management creates substantial workload. Institutions accepted donated materials from a mean of 18.85 donors in the past year, while only 7.69% say they have adequate space and staff to support new acquisitions; 57.69% say capacity is only somewhat adequate and 30.77% say it is not adequate.