Donation Frenzy Strikes (Again)

“Uh-oh.  Here comes a patron with a dusty box. Run for your LIVES!”  Ah yes, I’m talking about donations, donations, everywhere, and not a spot to put them!  Scary stuff, that (well, for a library-director/collections-specialist/customer-service-agent/etc-and-so-on, anyway)!

An insane overflow of donated items was simply not a problem I anticipated before starting my job here.  Too many donations?  No way, right? I was quickly enlightened – within my first few weeks on the job here, I realized my little library was awash in a stormy sea of donation frenzy.  Good-hearted (and occasionally desperate) packrats the town over converge on my library in devastating waves, as if some secret directive drifts along on the breeze, prompting the emptying of shelves en masse, at synchronized intervals.  In just about five months on the job, I have been offered multiple huge and outdated encyclopedia sets, box upon box of decrepit kids serial chapter books, armloads of ancient textbooks scented of dust.  My porch has been bombed with piles of unsolicited donations left furtively after hours, my bookdrop is clogged up by the bags-full.

Of course, despite the sheer and confounding quantity and the ever-pressing question of disposal, I can’t entirely complain.  There are good books intermingled with the unusable.  I’ve had whole sets of expensive teen graphic novels walk through my door, occasional new hardcovers and some great cookbooks.  It’s just a matter of all that extra rough that comes in with the diamonds!  I am overwhelmed!

The crux of the matter is space.  In my tiny library, every nook and cranny is put to use.  At this point, our booksale is already so disastrous, dusty, and overstuffed with tomes, it’s virtually defunct.  It’s a beast of a mess, awaiting a good taming long since before my arrival on the scene.  When spring comes, I will venture forth, with orange-scented cleaner and elbow grease aplenty.  If I have to bring in a dumpster, so be it!

In the meantime, it’s all I can do to stem the tide.  It always leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to send a hopeful, box-carrying patron off to find a different home for the unwanted books of the world, but it has to be done.

In this environment, there really is something to be said for the digitalization of books.  With just the donations I’ve seen here in my little town, I can’t even fathom the amount of paper that sits on shelves and in landfills the world over.  I know there are many library-folk out there worried about obsolescence in the digital age, but I truly believe our society is always going to be in need of freely available information access-points and there will always be a need for qualified and gifted question-answerers.  Our function and roles may shift – and maybe we won’t house paper books in the quantities we do now – but I’m confident there is a future for the library as an institution.  So hey, as far as I am concerned, go Kindle, go!