Questions about old donations made to the University

Normally it is OK to tell patrons about the provenance of specific items, but there may be some exceptions; check the records for notes about restrictions and ask University Advancement if in doubt. Certain gifts may have been anonymous or have other restrictions.

When possible, we include information about provenance of collections in the records in ArchivesSpace. You may need to log into the Staff Portal in order to find/see all the information.

Gifts given to the Archives pre-2012 do not always have notes in their records about provenance because we did not have a formal archives database before that date. In some cases we can make educated guesses about who donated the material based on clues within the collection itself, e.g. "Most likely donated by the son of the author," etc.

University Advancement is the best source of information on gifts outside the Archives/Museum/Art Collections. They may have records on specific collections as well. In general their records only go back a few years and require you to know the name of the donor however.

Some collections *may* have been given to the Old College Hall Museum originally, and records *might* exist there in the paper donor files, but a manual check of those records (potentially looking through dozens of files) would be required to confirm.

In rare cases other departments on campus may know more details about particular donations, e.g. the Alumni department or Facilities.