By Margaret Silbaugh
silbaugh@grinnell.edu
This coming Saturday, The Friends of Drake Community Library (FDCL) will be holding their annual fall book sale. The sale will be taking place in the community room of the Drake Community Library, located on the intersection of Fifth and Park Street. The FDLC has been putting on this event for more than ten years and uses the proceeds from the sale to provide the library with artwork, signage and other expenditures not covered by the city’s budget.
In addition to providing funds used to support the library, the president of the FDCL Rich Thorson says the book sale is also a “community effort [striving to] provide the [entire] community with reading material.”
Additionally, community members are active participants in the work that goes into the event. Grinnell’s high school cross country team help move sorted books from the basement of the library into the community room, and at the end of the event, football players loads the boxes of leftover books into a truck. The remaining books will be sent to a local volunteer who will make sure the books are recycled or reused.
Along with the benefits provided to the library and to the community, the book sale also offers Grinnellians an opportunity to practice sustainable living. Library director Marilyn Kennet describes the environmental importance of used book sales, saying that if it were not for the sale, “all of these [books] would just go into somebody’s trash or recycling. And these days, it’s really uncertain whether they even get recycled.”
Grinnell residents, as well as patrons from nearby towns such as Malcolm and Brooklyn, have been donating books throughout the year. It is the responsibility of FDCL members to sort through and organize the donations in preparation for the event. This year’s wide selection is guaranteed to be good. Kennet describes the set-up of the event as consisting of “rows of tables divided into genres … mysteries, self-help, gardening, children’s material, et cetera … we always have a good range of materials to sell.”
The sale, which board member Linda Buck estimates will contain more than two thousand books this year, begins at 8 a.m. and closes at 2 p.m. Buck suggests that customers come early because “the people that really want to get the best books will be here at 8 o’clock.” This year, hardcover books will be sold for $1; paperbacks, CDs and DVDs for 50 cents and children’s books for 25 cents. Cash, check and credit cards are all acceptable forms of payment.
