Buying Books at Library Sales: Good for You and Good for the Community
Buying your used books from library sales is a great way to find books to sell online. While you and I and all the other booksellers are profiting from the books we find at library sales, it’s easy to forget that with every book you buy there, you’re also supporting a good cause.
I get reminded about that fact from time to time, especially when I read an article like the one that recently ran in Wisconsin in the Superior Telegram. In the article, Janet Jennings reports that the local Friends of the Library group has donated a walker with a book basket attached to the library. The walker will help “those that need some assistance with fetching their own books, but have difficulty holding them.”
Library sales support libraries. A cynical way of looking at libraries is that they are giving away for free the very thing we sell to make our living. But in reality, there’s no shortage of demand for reading material. Libraries haven’t threatened the book selling business in the centuries they’ve been around, and they aren’t likely to start any time soon.
There will always be those who prefer owning books to borrowing them, and vice versa. Libraries are valuable community institutions, providing free access to knowledge, literature and entertainment to people of all ages and backgrounds.
Despite any controversy over the increase in booksellers and scanners at library sales, despite the fact that, let’s face it, you’re there to make a profit, despite all that, buying at library sales is not just good business, it’s good for the community too.
Even if your local FOL society isn’t going so far as to provide walkers, it is a good feeling to remember that something you do, just as part of your normal routine as a bookseller, is helping support an important institution of our society, and in some small way, helping to make the world a better place.
You can read the whole Telegram article here.
Tags: cash for books
