This article is more than 5 years old.

Along with Elise, Scott & Charles attended the first day of the annual Library Purchasing Committee Meeting of North Carolina Independent Colleges & Universities (NCICU) on May 23rd. We went to hear the panel discussion, led by committee members, on how to handle gifts and two presentations by organizations that sell libraries’ unwanted books.The overviews of the general accepting and processing of gifts were routine and unsurprising. Everyone seemed to be in agreement that, while gift collections often contain some items that are useful, much of what is taken in is “dross.” The importance of having a clearly defined policy of what a library does and doesn’t accept was emphasized as the best protection against being overwhelmed with unwanted volumes.

Still, the positive aspects of taking in donations were firmly emphasized. Social capital is to be had by providing a way for donors to responsibly dispose of the personal libraries of departed loved ones and for retirees to pass on things they no longer need or have space for. Another point made was that donors may be more likely to make monetary donations later, if the library has assisted them in this way first.

More interesting were the detailed discussions of how some of the other libraries deal with their unwanted gift items. While their operations fell into one or more of the three expected options (annual or occasional book sales, year round continuous book sales or giveaways, and selling items through a third party), it was interesting to hear how their approaches varied.

Guilford College, for example, has arranged a fairly efficient relationship with a local book dealer who “cherry picks” through their unwanted items periodically and carts off those that they anticipate they can sell in their shop or online. The library receives a quarterly check for their share of the profits. The vendor buys the books they are unable to sell after a certain period of time at a nominal price.

This basic idea is taken to a much more organized and high tech level by the two vendors whose presentations followed next. Better World Books and BLogistics are both organizations who deal with many libraries. Unwanted items are shipped to them, and they sell them through a large number of online vendors like Amazon.com, Ebay and Alibris. While basically similar, there are a few differences between the two. Blogistics is associated with Solinet. They prefer to deal in large shipments of books shipped by freight. Better World Books is able to handle shipments of books as small as 6 boxes, shipped via United Parcel. They are a “green” company, donating part of the profits to a carbon fund and another part to literacy charities. Both vendors donate or recycle unsold items after a specified amount of time.

Submitted by Charles & Scott