Support the Libraries
Thank you for your interest in supporting Temple University Libraries.
Temple University Libraries serve as trusted keepers of the intellectual and cultural record. Gifts from friends like you ensure we continue collecting, preserving, and providing access to a broad universe of materials, including physical and digital collections, archives, ephemera, and the products of scholarly enterprise at Temple. Your support also helps us continually provide research and learning services, maintain open access to our facilities and information resources, foster innovation and experimentation, and ensure that the groundbreaking new Charles Library operates at its full promise. View Charles Library funding opportunities here. View images—taken in September 2019—of the extraordinary new Charles Library.
Make a gift to the Libraries now or contact the Libraries' Department of External Affairs & Advancement at 215-204-9305 or dwash@temple.edu.
Giving Opportunities
Annual Funds
These funds support yearly operating budgets and ongoing needs for the Libraries over the course of each fiscal year.
- Library Annual Fund: Provide immediate support for ongoing library operations, activities, programs, and facilities in the current fiscal year. All donors who give $100 or more to the Library Annual Fund are acknowledged via a bookplate in a book in our physical collections. Gifts will also be acknowledged in the Libraries’ online catalog as part of our digital bookplate program. You can also honor a loved one with a bookplate.
- Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection Annual Fund: Provide immediate and unrestricted annual resources in order to support the costs associated with the Blockson Collection's important work to ensure the accessibility and preservation of its unique materials.
- Special Collections Annual Fund: Help ensure the annual preservation, digitization, access, acquisition, and programming needs of Temple's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), home to our unique, rare, and archival primary sources and materials.
- Temple University Press: Support the publishing of scholarly and trade books that help to expand research and scholarship and are of interest to the general public, including titles that require enhanced production features (including Press digital initiatives) and additional marketing and promotion.
- The Zane Miller Book Development Award: Support scholars from underrepresented communities with limited financial resources, whose work explores overlooked urban histories, groups, and perspectives, to develop and publish in Temple University Press’s Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy book series.
Endowment Funds
Endowments are invested for long-term stability and growth and are spent, according to Temple guidelines, at a rate of 4.25% a year. These funds provide a growing, steady source of income for the future of the Libraries.
- Library Endowment: Provide dedicated, permanent income for the Libraries’ initiatives and purchases, and other special projects as they arise, including our groundbreaking new Charles Library. View Charles Library funding opportunities.
- Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection Endowment: Help us preserve and improve accessibility of materials in the Blockson Collection, one of the nation's foremost research centers and archives on the study of African and African American history and culture.
- Philadelphia Jewish Archives Collection Endowment: Support the preservation of and access to materials in the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Collection (PJAC), a resource documenting local Jewish life, history, and culture, housed in our Special Collections Research Center.
- George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection Endowment: Help us preserve and digitize materials in the George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection, which holds the archives—including 4 million images and 7 million news clippings—from the Evening Bulletin’s coverage of the region and nation between 1847 and 1982.
- Livingstone Undergraduate Research Awards Endowment: Provide perpetual support for the Livingstone Undergraduate Research Awards, an initiative that honors the best in undergraduate research across a cross-section of disciplines and research methods annually.
Books and Materials
The Libraries accept some donations of books, photographs, and other materials.
Review our procedures for donating gifts-in-kind and work with our staff to determine if your potential book or archival donations align with our collecting interests.
- To donate gently used books in a wide variety of subject areas for our general circulating collections, please call the Acquisitions Dept. at 215-204-1359.
- To offer archival, rare, or special collections materials, or items documenting the history of Temple University to the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) , please send a description to msly@temple.edu.