Archives and Special Collections

DCU Library

Collection Development Policy

Introduction

DCU Library’s Archives & Special Collections (A&SC) preserves, manages and provides access to research, cultural and institutional collections in line with international best practice. This collection development policy is a commitment to our users, communities, and university, and part of an ongoing process to ensure our approach is active and transparent.

Collecting Areas and Priorities

We acquire extensive holdings through donations, bequests and strategic cooperation, to develop collections of research value in the following categories:

Archives of leading national and international figures and organisations;
Materials of relevance to the University’s history and heritage;
Selective instances of early printed books, rare monographs, periodicals and pamphlets.

Our main research disciplines include education, labour history, literature, media and journalism, politics, fields where DCU has strong academic profiles. Our strategic focuses are:

Build collections around existing and emerging research themes distinctive to the University;
To develop a theme around the University memory and its culture;
To preserve in perpetuity, as part of the national and international documentary heritage, unique, rare or distinct resources;
To make collections available in a timely manner onsite and, where possible, online.

Considerations

Donations and acquisitions place substantial demands on our resources, particularly on our ability to store and provide access to them sustainably. Accordingly, we will process donations responsibly, including de-accessioning as appropriate. It is our policy to prioritise collections which relate most directly to the University’s research priorities. We will also give precedence to projects where funding or resources are provided by donors or third parties. Any such assistance is warmly welcomed by the Library.

Our current policy is to acquire primary source archival material in physical or digital format. Our digital collections are managed onsite in DCU with professional partners to ensure their security, accessibility, and usability over time.

Although most of our collections are linked to University disciplines, many also reflect the outstanding roles people or organisations have played as innovators, leaders and pioneers, creating new realities and legacies in their fields.

We actively gather information about our collections from the point of accessioning onwards, to manage and provide meaningful onsite and online access. For example, collections are often enhanced through oral histories of donors and others whose stories augment collections.

We will generally not collect or retain:

Cuttings or clippings from, or copies of periodicals or other publications;
Reproductions or duplicates of material already held by DCU or by other repositories;
Materials in formats we cannot process or preserve.

Policy review procedure: This policy will be reviewed and published annually.