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A Reader’s Gift

by

Lauren Roberts

My mailbox, like most at this time of year, is overflowing with pleas for donations, catalogs, holiday credit card offers and other assorted “consumeristic” appeals. Receiving it, though, does not mean I read it or respond to it. Other than at independent and used bookstores, I despise shopping. And probably like you, I have a few causes about which I care deeply and so restrict my attention and help to those. One of them, not surprisingly, is reading.

This week I want to draw your attention to an idea that you may not have considered for the holiday season—cleaning out your library of books you know you won’t read (or read again) or books you bought only to find you have no significant attachment to them—and donating them to libraries, schools, reading programs, nonprofit book distribution organizations, senior citizen communities, abused women’s shelters, and children’s and young adults’ centers.

This is a gift you can give yourself as well as others. Most of us love being surrounded by books.  We love buying books. But sometimes books we thought we wanted and were sure we would read  become with time little more than shelf space hoggers. If that’s the case—and be honest here, it probably is—why not give yourself something that will really infuse your Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa with true holiday spirit?

You can start here. BiblioBuffet has a page entitled Book Donations, which lists a number of organizations that help channel books to those who don’t have them. But perhaps the first place to consider are those near you. You can easily determine which places will welcome donations of books by calling. I recommend this because they may have certain requirements or preferences, or want only certain types of books.

Public libraries have seen their book purchase budgets cut at the same time that demand for non-book items (videos, music CDs, Internet access, etc.) is rising. In addition, a number of elections have made disturbingly clear that people are becoming less willing to fund libraries. Donating books does not mean those books end up on the shelf since each library chooses what to do with them based on their needs. My city’s library system will, depending on the book, toss it, add it to the collection, sell it for $1-$20 in their “Books for Sale” section or, if it is valuable enough, put it up on eBay (something they recently did with a donation of a first edition Mark Twain novel, netting the library $2,000).

Elementary and high school libraries are hurting too. One painful incident here earlier this year clarified for me how much poorer are school’s resources for kids today than I was their age. I live in what is perceived as a rich area. What is less well known is that it is rapidly growing a substantial division between the have’s and have not’s. And that includes several schools where students’ parents cannot afford luxuries, a category into which books often fall. The school’s budget had shortfalls, and the librarian was laid off. Though they still have a library, I wonder how much longer will it be before the school just stops buying books for it. I grieve for that school and those children. And I have vowed to donate at least one book per month beginning in December.

Shelters for abused women (who often have children) can use books even though their focus is on the immediate needs required to save lives. In these shelters, the women and their children find safety, peace and considerable help in leaving abusive situations. Sometimes, though, the necessities crowd out everything else. Why not pick out a few anthologies or collections or, if you have them and they are in good shape, children’s books for them? Please be aware of the importance of condition when donating to any organization, but especially here. These women are in a difficult and scary situation with very few possessions and less self esteem; the last thing they need is something that looks like a hand-me-down.

Some individuals who care as much as I do about seeing books in the hands of anyone who wants them have done far more than donate a book or two. They gone on to found incredible organizations. One of those is the Book Thing. Located in Baltimore, Maryland, Book Thing is, as founder Russell Wattenberg put it, “a nonprofit organization that arose out of my obsession.” His obsession began when he was managing Doughterty’s Pub during the time a group of schoolteachers had been coming in for happy hour on Fridays. This particular Friday, Wattenberg had a load of books he had picked up earlier in his van, and he gave them the key along with encouragement to take what they needed or wanted. That was the beginning of a new career and a fabulous organization.  
 
“There are so many schools in Baltimore without libraries,” he notes on his web site. “There are communities without books and other communities where books are being taken to the dump. What I try to do is take the books from people who don't want them and give them to people who do want them. There is some selfishness involved, because I figure that if everyone reads a lot there'll be more people to have intelligent conversations with.”

Another fabulous organization is Books for Africa (with its headquarters in Minnesota), which aims to “end the book famine in Africa.” They are doing a damn good job too with more than 10 million books shipped since 1988. They are looking for books that most places are not such as textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, medical and law textbooks and journals, and National Geographic and academic journals, all less than ten years old. So if you have a wall of yellow spines that you’ve been thinking of (finally) tossing or your not-too-old textbooks, here’s a place that would love to get their hands on them.    

Darian Book Aid Plan, based in Connecticut, sends books in response to specific requests from Peace  Corps volunteers, libraries and schools all over the world. They also donate to libraries, prisons, hospitals, and Native American and  Appalachian groups in the United States. Since their founding in 1949, they have shipped over three million books to more than 180 countries. You must email them before sending donations (as their needs change). Right now they are looking for children’s books (pre-school to teen), classics, dictionaries in English, grammar books, crafts and how-to books, health, science, math, agriculture, gardening, beekeeping, ecology, recent encyclopedias, paperback editions of recent novels and more.

The Libri Foundation focuses on supplying small rural public libraries in the United States with new hardcover children’s books they could not otherwise afford. Since late 1990, they have donated nearly three million dollars' worth of new books to more than 2,200 libraries in 48 states. What’s particularly attractive about this organization is that the local librarian selects the books based on her community’s and library’s needs. Nor does their fundraising arm not send repeated appeals for donations—a refreshing change—or spend their money on useless “gifts” for donors. Rather, all donations go directly to the program.

Now that you know where to donate them, how do you clean out your library (especially if the thought of getting rid of any book makes you whimper)? Look at each book separately, doing no more than one shelf at a time, while answering these questions honestly:

How long have I had this?
Have I read this?
Would I love to re-read it (assuming I have read it)?
If I haven’t read it, why not?
Is it as important to me now as when I bought it?  
Will I really miss it as much as I think I will?

This holiday season, give a reader’s gift of a book to someone unable to afford one. You may never see the outcome, but I guarantee it will change a life.


Almost since her childhood days of
Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines have reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, approximately 750 bookmarks and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

 

 
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