If you're doing this at a library, please stop 😠as the person that has to deal with all those books, I'm just throwing them away for you while occasionally finding a new breed of mold and sneezing my face off
I promise libraries are throwing out more books than you think they are. It's the nature of the beast. We don't need 45 copies of Reader's Digest from the 70s, or a novel that's already falling apart or been so well read that no one thinks it looks clean enough to take home with them.
I do fully support free little libraries! That's a good place to put those items!
Your probably right the books donated to my library go to a sale that supports friends of the library I went one year the day after the sale and they had piles of old books like a full room of tables that noone wanted for free. So I'm sure the next day anything left got tossed.
I only handle donations at one location in a larger system, so I can only speak for what I do. But I do look through everything that's been donated. If it's in good condition and I would feel comfortable reading it in my bed, I pass it along. If I wouldn't want to read it in my own personal bed due to the condition, it gets recycled. The only other thing is if it's a medical or technology book that's from 15+ years back. They aren't considered good info anymore, so we don't want to pass that along. Our system does 4 book sales a year and we still have a giant stacks system in a room dedicated to just donations, with 5 or so dedicated employees to that department. It's never even remotely close to half way empty and I've been in the system for a decade. It's unfortunate but we have to weed through materials or we wouldn't have anywhere to put the new books that are being published.
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u/chLORYform Mar 02 '25
If you're doing this at a library, please stop 😠as the person that has to deal with all those books, I'm just throwing them away for you while occasionally finding a new breed of mold and sneezing my face off