ndrosen

As I am working at a library right now, it is a problem. Academics, where I am, are not as hard put upon for taking donations than public libraries. A lot of people think publics 'have to' take any old donations that people throw at them, and most of those end up in a dumpster late at night. They already have enough copies of The Twilight Saga, thank you very much, etc. Or the books are in horrible shape.

My local public library has one branch and no external warehouse. Book in, book out. They have to be very careful about acquisitions and weeding.

My library also has one site and no external warehouse. We have a bit of space and are on a buying spree right now as we have a grant that is in 'use it or lose it' mode: it's going to expire at the end of the fiscal year next June, so we're expanding our collection a bit.

Will we take donations? Yes. To a point. For the most part, our collection is related to studies and programs either at our college or at other schools in our network. We probably wouldn't take medical textbooks because we aren't involved in that.

Sadly, it's a tough thing disposing of book collections. My parent's books? Most of it will go in a dumpster. They've tried taking it to the local bookstore, they won't touch it.