The South Central Regional Library has put out a last call for book donations to help ensure the upcoming big book sale fundraiser really lives up to its name.
Director of library services Gail Hildebrand noted a couple of factors have come into play in terms of the library still appealing to local booklovers for donations.
“The last two years we have had the big book sale back, we had had two semi-trailers full of books donated from the leftovers at the children’s hospital sale in Winnipeg,” she noted. “We are only getting one trailer this year because they have changed their format as well.”
It was Hildebrand’s sense as well that things haven’t yet fully rebounded from the shutdown during the pandemic years.
“We had that break over COVID,” she said, noting the Access Event Centre “was a vaccination site in Morden, so we couldn’t use the centre for those years, and we just lost a lot of our donations, so we’ve been really advertising and pushing for donations … we just haven’t really come back donation-wise since before COVID.”
Through the pandemic, the various SCRL branches held smaller sales in their own communities.
Since the return of “the big one” in 2024, the sale has brought in about $18,000 in support of the regional library network.
This year’s sale takes place April 30 from 2 to 8 p.m., May 1 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and May 2 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the event centre in Morden. People are once again invited to bring along a reasonably-sized bag to fill with books for just $10 (oversized bags may be charged more at checkout).
As far as donations go, they’re are currently accepting a little bit of everything: children’s books, paperback fiction and nonfiction, inspirational fiction and nonfiction, hardcover fiction under 20 years old, literature, drama and poetry, biographies, humor and comics, cookbooks, gardening and hobby books, CDs and DVDs, and also accounting, computer science, economics, law, medicine and science textbooks that are less than five years old.
They do not accept moldy or smelly books, damaged books with missing pages, Reader’s Digest condensed books, magazines, university texts that are more than five years old, Harlequin romances more than five years old, encyclopedia sets, and cassette and VHS tapes or LP records.
“We try to stay away from the older non-fiction stuff because it gets outdated,” said Hildebrand, adding non-fiction ideally would be five years old or newer as well.
She noted they have been surprised at times by what seems to be most popular.
“What we find with the big one is there is a lot of the non-fiction that we think will never go,” she said. “That’s where the niche market comes in. You can’t even guess though as far as what is going to go.”
“Another unusual trend in the past couple of years has been people purchasing the books that look like classics … they aren’t really classics, but people buy books for decor,” she added.
“There’s something for everybody, and people are often after something different, but usually it’s the adult fiction and the kid’s books that are the big sellers, and Christian fiction as well in this area.”
Donations will be accepted at any SCRL branch until April 11.
