McKeldin Library holds hundreds of outdated magazines and newspapers in a back storage room on Thursday March 27, 2014.

When Alison Whitty’s superior tasked her with putting a welcoming touch on Cole Field House’s newly created nursing mothers’ room, she reached out to McKeldin Library, requesting any outdated materials it could pass along. 

“Are there any magazines or books you all aren’t using?” she asked a faculty member at the library during one phone conversation in December.

The faculty member told Whitty, a Campus Recreation Services media specialist, “No,” explaining that most old material is archived and unarchived items are thrown away.

“They just said it was property of the state,” Whitty said. “They can’t give it away.”

There are about 1.2 million books in McKeldin. But because of state policy, the university library system cannot give away anything from its active collection, even if its destination is a university venue, said Daniel Mack, associate dean for collections.

Whitty ultimately was able to fill the room in Cole with old health magazines from fellow faculty member’s subscriptions. But she wished she could pull from the library’s discarded collection.

“Even on campus, it just seems wasteful, if it’s money we had to spend,” she said. “It’s a great resource that someone else could use, rather than just destroy them.”

University libraries follow a process for handling outdated or damaged material, Mack said. In August, a mold discovery on McKeldin’s fifth floor forced administrators to trash 10,000 affected volumes.

Once an item has been deemed unnecessary, be it a book or a print periodical, it goes to a vendor for resale, a nonprofit that would donate it to a less-developed country or, if it’s considerably damaged such as in the 2013 mold outbreak, the recycling bin. All profits from resale go back into library funds, he said.

“Most states have laws that prevent us from giving to students and faculty, to prevent fraud,” Mack said. An outside party could benefit financially from falsifying identification and reselling the old items, he said.

This law stems from the Fiscal and Business Affairs section of the University System of Maryland’s bylaws, policies and procedures list, said David Warner, a librarian in the state Department of Legislative Services.

That policy, in a subsection centered on the disposal of surplus property, states that designated surplus items can be disposed of by transferring or donating “to another institution or major component in the University System,” provided there is proper documentation.

The notion that the library is dumping valuable print material is a misconception, Mack said. He estimated 80 percent of the library’s collections budget goes into online databases every year. He said while the system has multiple subscriptions to casual reading publications such as Time magazine, it’s been years since McKeldin actually has received them in print form.

“When materials have to be discarded, it’s almost always because they’re damaged beyond value,” Mack said. “We don’t just have magazines lying around and then we throw them out. We just don’t do that.”