No book donations? What’s a person to do?

We have a “rule” at the Carleton Place Public Library…..only 2 boxes of book donations at a time.  You might ask, how big can the boxes be? Can I donate two more boxes tomorrow? What can I put in the boxes? What if I have two boxes and a small bag?  The questions could go on and on, but I’ll explain.

Our library sale table

First of all, the 2-box rule is just so we can keep a handle on how many books we have sitting on our office floor at one time. We don’t have a lot of space, and if someone were to clean out their home and bring in eight boxes of books, well, you can imagine we’d be tripping over them until we had the chance to go through them. No, we don’t just open the boxes and throw everything on our sale table, either, as some people think.  We go through them. Book by book. Whatever we can use for our own shelves, we take, and the rest is sorted into sale table books and garbage.  Yes, garbage.  You wouldn’t believe how often people bring us boxes of books that are moldy or falling apart.  We wouldn’t put those on our shelves for patrons, and we certainly wouldn’t expect someone to pay  25 cents for one. So, unfortunately, they might go in the garbage (or recycling, depending).

But for the most part, we are THRILLED to get donations of books. It helps us to stretch our library collection and provide books to our patrons we might not otherwise have found or been able to afford. We love donations.  Keep in mind though, that it takes time to add new books to our catalog. They have to be cataloged, covered, and have spine labels added. It might not be available for a while, so if you’ve given us a book, don’t be surprised if you don’t see it on the shelves right away.

So, when I came across an article about the New York Public Library system and how they don’t accept book donations, it made a lot of sense, even if it angers people who’d like to donate. We’re only one library, not part of a branch.  In New York, there are so many branches that they have a central processing branch where new books are cataloged, covered and sent out to the branches that need them.  Can you imagine, then, if someone donated a book to one of the other branches?  They’d have to take that book, send it to the processing branch, process the book and then send it out to the branch that actually needed the book.  A lot of work and a lot of time for a book no one was expecting. Now, multiply that by BOXES of books, and you have a problem. You can read the entire article here.

With so many people switching to eBooks, we’re bound to start seeing more used books showing up at the library. It’s a new world out there and libraries will have to adapt or make new rules. What do you do with your used books?