Book Sale Room: "Hello, Is It Me You're Looking for?"

I know what you may be thinking, "Really? You're using a Lionel Richie song in the title of a blog post?" To that, I say, "Why, yes, I am! It perfectly fits the reason why I'm writing this blog post...to better acquaint you with our Book Sale room."

First of all, you may be curious as to our process of the public's generous donations. We take in a plethora of books, paper materials, and other materials from our patrons, regardless of their condition. Once you've dropped these off to us, we sort through them and make final determinations based on what our collection might need, the condition of the material, and overall value of said item.

You may be wondering, "What happens to my donated item(s) after that?" Well, if we decide not to add an item to our collection there are two ways we deal with it from there, and one of them is to add it to our Book Sale room collection instead. You now might be wondering, "Where is this room? How do I locate it?" Which is a great question because many other patrons have been wondering this as well!

This "elusive" room remains stationary on the lower level of our beautiful library. Being that it is difficult to locate without a proper sense of direction (and perhaps even a map), we thought it was necessary to write a blog post about it, complete with illustrious pictures to give you a good idea of what you're looking for.

 Here is a step-by-step on how to visually find our Book Sale Room:

 

Photo directions

 Video directions

For all you patrons who prefer precise, written directions, here is a sequential list of how to find it: 

1. When you first arrive at our library, you will enter through the front doors (yes, there are two in a row!) onto the upper level. You will see the Circulation Desk to the left where you can drop off your donations for us to sort through.
   
2.  You will then walk a few steps to the stairs that descends into the lower level of the library. You will pass a portrait of Andrew Carnegie, who made great contributions to social causes such as public libraries, education and international peace, on your way down.
3. Once you've landed at the bottom of the flight of stairs you will want to turn to your left. This may look like an area you shouldn't be in, but rest assured that you are indeed allowed to walk this way.
4. Turn the corner around the display case (to the left again) and you will see a small room at the end of the this short corridor. This is the Book Sale room and you have arrived!

Want a short and condensed version? Enter library, head downstairs, make two lefts and you will see the Book Sale room.

The final option we have if we cannot utilize a donated material is to recycle and do our part in the fight to keep our planet clean. We believe that it is much better to recycle an item than to simply toss it away to decompose in a dump, which can take years (or in some cases - never) to completely biodegrade. We utilize a service called Paper Gator to help us do this, which is free and open to the public as well. It is located in the back portion of our parking lot and looks a lot like a big green dumpster with an alligator on the front of it. On the rare occasion that we have to utilize recycling this is the way we go - this way we can do our part in saving the environment, and you can too! We encourage the public to recycle here when they have paper materials that have nowhere else to go.

Whether or not you were aware of our Book Sale room, our process for donations, or our recycling efforts we encourage and appreciate all the support from our community. Please continue to call or stop in to clarify any of these things and we will be happy to help you. You may find our contact information our website: www.pdl.michlibrary.org; or, on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/PortlandDistrictLibrary/. We hope to see you soon!