Volunteers valuate voluminous volumes

How many books can you put in 2,223 boxes?

“I’m guessing 80,000,” said Jane Gilbert, chairwoman of the 32nd annual Friends of the Eugene Public Library Book sale this weekend.

The event is Saturday and Sunday at the Lane Events Center. It’s the main fundraiser for the “Friends,” who regularly raise more than $100,000 for the library.

Volunteers will spend all day today setting up for the popular event. Thursday, volunteers could be found at a warehouse on Highway 99, building pallets and loading the boxes of books into a trailer for delivery to the fairgrounds.

Paperbacks sell for $1 and most hardbacks and large paperbacks for $1.50. Money raised is used for library programs, especially for families and children, Gilbert said.

In addition to the annual book sale, the group raises money through donations and membership fees, Gilbert said. In January, the group gave a $125,000 check to the library, she said.

Shoppers at the book sale also will be able to buy used DVDs, audio books, sheet music and CDs. Rare and specialty books will be available in an individually priced section.

Donations are collected all year at drop boxes at the downtown library and both branch libraries. Volunteers known as “cullers” sort through the books looking for ones they think will sell, Gilbert said. Those are the ones that are boxed and taken to the warehouse.

“In some ways, I think they should be called ‘gleaners,’” Gilbert said. “Because they’re taking out what’s good, not what’s bad.”

Library volunteers load up 90-gallon containers that look like yard-waste containers every week throughout the year. A St. Vincent de Paul truck with a mechanical arm comes to get them. Other books go to the library’s read-and-return program, which offers paperbacks that can be borrowed without a library card. Others are taken to Second Hand Prose, the library’s used-book store, and still others go to Book Givers, a Eugene agency that distributes books to agencies that help families in need.

About half of all the donated books don’t make the cut for the annual sale. Most of the titles not chosen instead go to St. Vincent de Paul.

Volunteers have been known to find all sorts of things in donated books: crisp $100 bills, postcards, photos and letters, credit cards, even dead mice and underpants.