A sharp-eyed subscriber has reminded me that the "Free Books" sign at your local library could just as easily have been placed by a Friends of the Library group as by the library itself. Which is a nice segue into today's topic...the Library, or the Friends of the Library, book sale:
This is what happens when a library has an active Friends group, which provides the library with financial support that the library should be getting from local government but usually isn't.
The library's friends donate a bunch of books, the library deaccessions books that it no longer needs but does not want to just give away for free, and it's all put up for sale to the general public.
There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these sales held every year: click here to see if there is one about to be held in your area.
In the old days (aka pre-Internet), it was difficult for libraries and their friends' groups to have a good idea about how to value these volumes, unless a local bookseller was willing to donate his or her time for the purpose. Nowadays, of course, a click of the mouse allows both the libraries and their friends' groups to get a pretty fair idea of pricing very quickly. Where these nice folks sometimes unintentionally go astray is in pricing their volumes at a Fine price when in fact the book is only in Good condition. Moral: you can find some great deals at these sales, but you can just as easily find volumes that you could have bought less expensively elsewhere....
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