Help us make the best use of your donations

While the library is very pleased to receive donations of books that expand our collection in identified areas of need or that can be sold to augment our grant funding, there are things donors can do to help us take best advantage of your donations.

• Please call in advance (or drop by when we're open) to see if we want and can use your particular donations. There are many types of books or books in certain conditions that we cannot accept and our space for warehousing unwanted books is extremely limited. Other recipients might be better able to make use of your donations, and we can help guide you to some of these.
• Please call in advance (or drop by when we're open) to arrange a time for dropoff. Our library is staffed only a few hours and days a week. When you drop items at other times, books may become damaged or they may be beyond the physical capabilities of a particular volunteer to move. Big bundles of books dropped into the book return only damage our library materials and become weather-damaged themselves. Recently, a very large donation was left outside the library, without notice, for days in boxes too large for our volunteers to lift once they did discover them. In that time, the books became weather-damaged as well as suffering from the territorial marking practices of local dogs. Would you want to read these books or have your children read them? What a sad waste, and one that could have been prevented with a phone call.
• These are some donation types we welcome:
  • current or popular authors, fiction or nonfiction, in hard cover or trade (large format) paperback editions
  • any Alaskana titles
  • children's titles in good condition
  • movies on videotape or DVD with original packaging in good condition
  • music or book CDs or cassettes with original packaging in good condition
• These are some donation types that we regretfully cannot make use of:
  • books damaged by water, damp, mildew, smoke, mold, animal gnawing, food, or with torn pages or scribblings
  • textbooks
  • regular (small) format paperbacks, although you are welcome to add them to the paperback trade carousel in the hall outside the library (please don't just drop them on the floor for volunteers to put away)
  • encyclopedia sets
  • large back issue collections of magazines
  • instructional videos that came with building supplies or appliances
  • homemade/home-recorded videotapes or ripped DVDs/CDs

Remember—all it takes is a quick call or visit to make sure that we're the best recipient for your donations and can make good use of them once you deliver them. Our phone numbers, email address and open hours are at the head of this page and posted on the library door. And if we can't use your donations, we'll be happy to make suggestions for other good uses of these items. Like you, we don't want to see them go to waste.