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See also the WLP Book Certificate Program |
Book DonationThink Twice Before you Donate Books
"I can tell you that you are absolutely right about every single word that
you write. I have settled recently in New York. I came from Bosnia, a
country that went through a devastating war. I witnessed tons and tons
of useless donations. We had such great problems with shipments of donations
and problems getting rid of them, such as expired medications. Of course
lots of things were useful and we could not have survived without them,
such as food and warm winter clothing. When you are receiving help, you
feel that it is kind of impolite to say send me this, don’t send
me that, most of the time, but I really feel sorry for all the hard work
on both sides with shipments of tons of goods that are sent and then thrown
away. Books are also a big issue. Some of them I laughed at like when
I saw “How to Succeed in the Stock Market”. What irony to
send it to a country where a financial system absolutely did not exist,
or books about how to have a great vacation, while people could not leave
their basements. Don’t even mention that they were written in a
foreign language unknown to the local people. I remember that people used
a lot of the books mostly to make fires. As you said, the best way of
helping any library in the world is to send money to purchase books in
that country. However, I also would like to thank people all over the
world who helped us, who thought about us and who sympathized with us
during the war." Have you ever stared at a pile of old school books and wondered if someone, somewhere could use them? If so, the thought may have crossed your mind to send them off to a developing country. Surely that would be better than throwing them away… Perhaps not. My colleagues and I have first-hand experience with the problems caused by book donation in several countries. Here are some things to consider before you give your books to a book donation agency or ship them off to a developing country:
In addition to all these points, it is important to consider that book donation can actually HARM school libraries. Many schools do not allocate funds for books because they hope to get them donated. If the donated books are a huge disappointment, this kills support for the library. Book donation also takes business away from indigenous booksellers and publishers. I cannot stress enough the importance of local publishing. Africa is information rich, but book poor. Without more African publishing, huge areas of knowledge will be lost. Entire languages may disappear. Every dollar spent on buying books in Africa helps to ensure that African authors will be able to publish their work in their own countries. An alternative use for your old books would be to sell them and donate the money to a program that purchases new books for schools and libraries in developing countries. The World Library Partnership runs a book certificate program that enables African libraries to purchase books at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. This gives the librarians the opportunity to choose what they purchase, thereby ensuring that the materials will match the needs and interests of library users. If enough people ask, book donation organizations may even change their policies and start purchasing some materials abroad. When you consider the costs of shipping, you can often get a lot more books for the buck by buying them in Africa.
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