The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections welcomes gifts of books, manuscripts, personal papers, photographs, and small artifacts that adhere to our collecting policies, as well as financial support to continue to care for our existing collections and provide access to them. For example, funding would provide for the purchase of preservation materials or large-scale digitization of our collections.
Subjects for materials to donate include Toledo-based businesses with an emphasis on the glass industry, disability history, ethnic culture, medicine and health, gender and sexuality, and municipal government.
If you are interested in making a gift or donation to the Canaday Center, we encourage you to first contact our staff. Our University Archivist, Sara Mouch, can help you determine if your item(s) would make an appropriate addition to our holdings.
For more information on donating to archives, please see this guide from the Society of American Archivists.
Copyright generally rests with the creator, or the heirs of the creator, of records. If you are the copyright holder, we encourage you to transfer non-exclusive rights to the Canaday Center in order to aid in our efforts to expand access to our holdings through the digitization of original materials. If your are unsure of the copyright status of your donation, contact a copyright expert.
The Canaday Center does NOT provide appraisal services. We are not trained to do so, and, as the recipient of your donation, the Center is considered to be an interested party and by law is prohibited from appraising or estimating a value of your gift. Donors who require an appraisal must contact an independent appraiser and pay for that service themselves.
If you are interested in learning more about the criteria we use to determine the value of historical records, as well as to see the full collecting policies of our University Archives, Manuscripts, and Rare Books collections see the other pages in this guide.