Attention Library Patrons! Do NOT Donate Your Stinky Old Books and Textbooks to your Local Public Library
We don’t need your useless crap any more than you do
So you’re de-cluttering or Swedish Death Cleaning or Marie-Kondo-ing, which is to say that you’re finally getting rid of all the unwanted crap that’s been piling up in your home for years.
Hurrah! That’s great! Well done, you!
As a librarian, I’ve got just one small request. Please — whatever you do — DO NOT donate your gritty paperbacks, decades-old textbooks, former bestsellers that have been moldering away your basement for years or your stacks of National Geographics and Readers Digests to your local public library.
We don’t need travel books from the 1970s either.
When in Doubt? Throw it Out.
I get it. You hate to throw out a book. I’m a librarian. I love books too. And yet, I’m begging you — PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE — instead of giving us that mildewed copy of Revolution from Within?
Just recycle it.
And no, we do not want your 2008 guide for prepping for the PRAXIS either.
Or that copy of 50 Shades of Grey with the smutty pages folded over for easy reference. You may not know this, but so many unwanted copies of 50 Shades of Grey have been given to used bookstores and libraries over the years that several recipients of these “gifts” have actually created mocking sculptures from them, like this 50 Shades of Grey fort erected by Goldstone Books:
And we’d be very happy if we never saw another copy of The Purpose Driven Life, Jonathon Livingstone Seagull or anything Twilight.
When Bad Book Donations Happen to Good Libraries
The library does not need these books. We can’t add them to our collections and we can’t sell them because they are either hopelessly out of date or in rotten condition or both.
And why on earth would we want a copy of Where’s Waldo in which Waldo is circled on every page?
Please. Listen to me. When you donate your decades old college biology textbook or your disintegrating copy of Margorie Morningstar to the library you are not helping us. You are wasting our time.
Somebody has to sort through those donations, remove the stuff we can actually use, and recycle the rest. At my library, this person was me.
I worked at my local public library for 21 years, and I spent more hours than I care to think about lugging worthless books to the recycling bin.
“But I loved this novel when I read it in the early 1990s!” you protest. “It shouldn’t matter that I dropped it in the bathtub. So what if the pages are a little wrinkly? Someone can still read it!”
But nobody wants to.
Think About It
Think about it. Do you actually believe that we’re going to add this Nora Roberts paperback with the pages fused together to our collection? Or this Constitutional Law casebook from the 90s?
Sometimes as I schlepped box after box of useless books to the recycling bin, I’d imagine what would happen if my library actually started adding this stuff to our collection. Just picture visiting your local library and finding the shelves packed with nothing but dusty outdated paperbacks, decades-old textbooks, and dozens of copies of Twilight.
Keep this picture in mind. And the next time you want to donate a book to the library, ask yourself — if I found this book on a library shelf, would I want to check it out?
If the answer is no, just put it in the recycling bin where it belongs. And accept my thanks on behalf of your local public library.
( Writing Coach and editor-for-hire Roz Warren writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, and is the author of Our Bodies, Our Shelves: A Collection of Library Humor, and Just Another Day At Your Local Public Library. If you want to buy inscribed copies, ask her to speak at your library’s next “In Service” day, or just want to say hi, you can reach her at [email protected])
