As we have been weeding for a while now, we have many boxes of CDs and older novels which we plan to offer to our church people first before offering them to smaller churches.
I plan to display them on several long tables in an entry foyer.
as most of our members don't know we have been purging our shelves, my staff consultant has recommended that we inform church members of this activity before we display them.
Have any of you put a blurb in the Sunday bulletin for a give-away? I'm looking for a short concise wording if some of you have already done this. Thanks!
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Not really answering your questions, but what we do....Once or twice a year, we have a "sale" of our weeded and donated materials. We put up tables in the hallway outside the library, with signs that they are available for anyone who wants them, and we ask for a donation (whatever they want to give...and it has ranged from a buck to several hundred bucks!). That money goes right back into the library. The leftovers are taken to a resale or thrift store in the area.
We have a permanent "free table" where I put weeded items or donated books that we do not want to put in the library. (The donated materials are all 'vetted' by myself and occasionally a pastor or teacher who looks over the table for items I may have missed. People tend to randomly drop stuff off there, and I don't want it to be a free-for-all for peoples' donations that might be off topic or just secular stuff they can donate elsewhere!). Our church bulletin is pretty tight for space, and so even library announcements are not welcome, but I do write a monthly column for our church newsletter, where I highlight new materials. In that space, I occasionally mention the free table and the reasoning behind needing to weed books, etc. If I see that books are not moving off the free table over a period of several weeks, I will gather most of them up and take them to the public library for their book sale.
We have a library cart that we put in the hallway with a sign on it stating Free Books. It can travel to different spots such as fellowship hall for Wednesday supper nights. It's always cleaned off in a week.
I advertised it on our social media page. We haven't done it in a while, but need to.
A long time librarian gave me the advice of taking materials out of county for donations, thus avoiding having them "show up again" at church.. or being asked"why are you getting rid of these? Or being redonated back. Has worked well.. and no one has questions.
I do struggle with the question of "why are you weeding these?" But honestly, if they would look at the check-out dates in the back of the book, they would see that it hasn't been used in 15 or 20 years! I need shelf space for newer, fresher items, but I do keep classic books and resources. The idea of moving materials out of the church and not leaving things out for the congregation to browse is tempting, though....
That's a great suggestion because it someone re-donating books actually happens!
Both of those are great! Exactly what I was looking for!
I also wanted to know exactly what to do and I recently saw a post from Park Cities Baptist Church Dallas Library and it says...
"Free! Books, DVDs and a few CDs all up for grab. We are clearing out our shelves to make room for new resources. Some of these were donations that we are not able to use, so they don't even have library markings.
We are also eliminating our entire collecitoj of DVDs; children's, animated cartoons, family favorites, classics, history, travel...all available for the taking!
Stop by during library hours and fill a bag or two!"
I also just came across a notice from my previous church many years ago. It was short and sweet...
"Spring cleaning extended to Summer. Discarded books will continue to be displayed in the lobby. All donations are used to purchase new books."
I liked these and may use them as a guide when I'm ready.
In our parish community our weeding and inventory is constant, people drop off books too. We separate the very good weeded items and box them for offerings for Advent and Lent. We call this "Gently Used Books for Donations" The books are on a table in the Narthex of our Church. Since Advent and Lent our parishioners turn inward for their faith and to offer these very good books on our faith for two weeks prior to these seasons has worked well for us. Currently, our Lenten offerings is going on. The donations have been good but that is not the point. The point is evangelization. The monetary donations do help towards purchasing books. Our Library has to fund itself. We have both bulletin and pulpit announcements for this table.