NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 22 number 2 - Winter 2002

By Tracy Proctor, Development

"The heart of a library is its collections."

The NCSU Libraries' collection of books, journals, and electronic resources provides the materials necessary for teaching and research. The need for faculty and students to engage in serious scholarship consistently requires the Libraries to add to, update, and preserve its collection. Yet, the skyrocketing costs of print and electronic materials threaten to limit the resources the library can offer. State support alone will not provide the funds necessary to maintain the quality of the collection. To protect the gains the Libraries has made and to continue providing scholars with the research materials they need, the library must supplement its budget with private funding.

Donors like you can help the NCSU Libraries remain the gateway to knowledge at NC State by establishing a library endowment for collections. Collection endowments are designed to support the Libraries' collections in all formats, whether paper or electronic. They can be set up to provide support for collections in general or for an area of university concentration such as genomics, world literature, or mechanical engineering. A library endowment can be established with a minimum contribution of $15,000, which can be paid over five years with a pledge agreement.

The NCSU Libraries' established an Incubator Endowment to provide an alternative for donors who want to support the library's collections but who need more than five years to achieve full endowment status. These accounts are named funds created with an initial gift of $1,000 or more and are administered within an endowment held by the Libraries. Just like full library endowments, a donor can name an Incubator Endowment and select a preference for a collection area.

Once an endowment is fully funded, the library designs a customized bookplate. A donor may choose to provide family photographs or art work that can be used as a design element for the bookplate, which is printed on preservation quality, acid-free paper and mounted inside all the materials purchased with income from the endowment.

By establishing collection endowments, donors ensure that the heart of the library remains strong. Tomorrow, next year, or even decades from now, students and faculty will use the materials made available by these gifts. Each time scholars open a book and see a bookplate bearing the name of an endowment, they will realize that library donors believed enough in education and research to provide them with the necessary materials.

Your generosity and that of other donors provides a lasting legacy. For more information about full library endowments or the Incubator Endowment, please call the director of development at (919) 515-3339.

Bookplate captions:

1. The J. Lawrence and Ella H. Apple Library Endowment, founded by current Friends of the Library board president Lawrence Apple and his wife Ella, supports the NCSU Libraries' collection in all subjects. Recently, income from this fund made it possible for the Libraries to purchase Evolution Equations in Thermoelasticity by Song Jiang and Reinhard Racke.

2. Longtime library supporters Donald and Verdie Moreland established the Ruth C. Moreland Plant Sciences Collection Endowment to honor Donald Moreland's mother. This year, income from the endowment allowed the NCSU Libraries to add Membrane Biophysics: As Viewed from Experimental Bilayer Lipid Membranes, edited by H. Ti Tien and Angelica Ottova-Leitmannova, to its collection.

3. Retired NC State faculty and staff created the Retired Faculty and Staff Library Endowment to support the general development and enhancement of the NCSU Libraries, including its collection. Materials purchased with income from the endowment cross many disciplines, such as the recent addition of City Literacies: Learning to Read Across Generations and Cultures by Eve Gregory and Ann Williams.