Bins have been set up at the Chota Recreation Center, the Public Library at Tellico Village and the Tanasi Golf Course clubhouse for residents to donate books and games for the Friends of the Tellico Village Library’s annual book sale in April.
“Actually, we collect books all year because the library has books that are no longer in pristine shape for them, and so they give them to us to put it in the sale,” Artie Ferrell, co-coordinator of this year’s sale, said. “... We have estates that donate books. If the library can’t use them in the lending program, they give them to us at the sale, so it’s important for the community to keep in mind that we have the sale. They can donate all year to the library.”
As books come in throughout the year, library staff reviews the volumes to make sure they can’t be used in the existing library catalogue before giving them to sorters for the sale.
“They are sorted by genre and author, particularly in romance and mystery because those are categories that are so popular,” Carolyn McDermott, last year’s co-coordinator, said. “We literally receive thousands of books. We have a crew that comes in every Friday at 10 (a.m.) that takes care of those books that have accumulated during the week. It just keeps things moving.”
Betty Moore helps Ferrell collect items from all donation bins twice a week and also sorts books on Fridays at the library annex.
“We’ve been sorting since the last book sale,” Moore said. “We didn’t sort every week.”
Donation bins will be available until the third week in April, with the Friends of the Tellico Village Library preview sale beginning April 27.
Acceptable donations include books on compact disc, children’s books, CDs, cookbooks, digital versatile discs, games, hardback and paperback books and puzzles. Unacceptable donations include cassette tapes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, volumes of Reader’s Digest and textbooks.
“Unfortunately, there’s a lot that has to be recycled,” Moore said of receiving unacceptable donations each year.
All items need to be in good use, McDermott said.
“Old, tattered, dirty books are not acceptable because we can’t use them,” she said. “... We’re more concerned about the quality of the books themselves.”
Last year’s donation bins resulted in 30,000 items being collected, Moore said.
“The residents are extremely generous,” McDermott said. “We have to take the books out of the bins every week, bring them into the library and then they are processed for the sale.”
The annual sale is the library’s major fundraiser, Ferrell said, with money raised fluctuating throughout the years.
“The library is funded by the community,” Ferrell said. “It’s not like we have a tax base that we get funding from, so we depend on fundraisers and the generosity of the community.”
