Its return to a large, full-scale book sale this past week paid off nicely for the South Central Regional Library.
Director of library services Cathy Ching estimated the sale held over three days at the Access Event Centre in Morden brought in about $17,500 for the library network.
“It was so exciting to have it back. It felt good. It was good to have it back again,” said Ching, who noted those proceeds are noteworthy given it came from selling bags of books for $10 each. “That’s a lot of bags of books. It’s quite impressive when you think how many bags walked out the door.”
The used books and other materials came not just from local donations but also a mountain of boxes leftover from a used book sale held in support of the Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg earlier this spring.
As always, the sale’s opening night last Thursday was especially busy, with a lineup that Ching estimated meant it took perhaps 10 minutes for people just to get into the arena.
She gave credit to Morden branch librarian Gail Hildebrand for overseeing it all as well as the Morden fire department for assisting.
“They did help us unload all those books, and then at the end of the sale they helped move them all out of there,” said Ching, adding the fire department will get a portion of the proceeds for their efforts.
“Our volunteers, we couldn’t have done this without them. They really stepped up for us,” she added. “It was so nice to see the reception from the community, and it was people coming from all around.”
Ching noted they have a few changes in mind already for next year.
“We learned a few things we want to do differently next year just to make it easier for people. Now that we know a bit better what we need to do, we can get it all sorted out a bit better.”
One thing they will look at is having some books sorted according to language.
“We heard so many people speaking different languages,” Ching said. “We had language collections in those boxes, but we’ve never had a sale where we’ve had so many people ask us for Spanish and German books. We’ve always had a small section. Next year we’re going to focus on having a section set up just for the German and the Spanish and the French books.”
They will also aim to better sort the non-fiction books into various categories.
“We need to be a little more specific with that,” Ching said. “People had a little more work to do to find what they were looking for there.”
Ching noted there have been some questions about what happens with all the leftover books.
“We got some books packed up for the prison libraries in Winnipeg and a few other community groups, but otherwise they went to recycling,” she said. “If we did have more help and more volunteers, we could maybe make other projects happen … but we just didn’t have enough bodies and time.”
