I hate sounding like the grinch, but please do not put donations in the book drop. Please tell all of your friends and family to stop putting donations in the book drop. We are very grateful that donors think of us when trying to re-home books and will gladly take donations through the door when we are open. Call ahead, and we can tell you whether your donation would be better served coming here or being dropped in the Middle School book donation bin. We can even meet you at the back door and help unload more often than not.
The book drop is for Library returns only, though, and there are very good reasons:
- The book drop is not big enough to accommodate donations. Library returns alone can fill it up on long weekends.
- Books are heavy. Some of them are fragile. All the DVDs are fragile. Whenever a bunch of heavy books gets dumped in the chute all at once, bookboards come off their hinges, media cases get squished, and disks crack. The destruction of circulating CWMARS items isn’t a good trade-off for donations.
- We really don’t want Library materials mixed with non-Library materials. When we empty the book drop, everything has to be checked in and either re-shelved or put in delivery to go back home or to the next patron. When we get an item missing a barcode, we have to do our due diligence to make sure it doesn’t actually belong to another library. Sometimes books lose their stickers, and some libraries put their stickers in really obscure places. It takes a looooong time to filter through a book drop full of donations to make sure we don’t miss any check-ins.
- Dropping your donations in a the book drop means no receipt to file with your taxes.
- If you don’t come into the Library to donate your books, you miss the opportunity to check out more books!