Booth Library held the Fall Book Sale earlier this week on Wednesday around the Alumni Clock tower in front of the southern entrance of the library.
The sale featured a variety of books from nearly every genre including a selection of picture and children’s books this year, a popular pick among education majors according to Anna Nelson and Janice Derr.
Nelson serves as public relations director who handles press releases and social media for the library. She has worked in this position for a year come October, she said, and formerly served as the tourism director in Tuscola.
Derr serves as the head of acquisition services who oversees collecting book donations from community donors, purchasing the library’s expansive inventory and organizing the book sale each semester.
The sale serves as a “nice chance to give these books a second life,” said Derr.
Derr also said that student volunteers from the men’s and women’s tennis teams, women’s basketball team, the honor’s college and the office of civic engagement and volunteerism also help organize the event.
The 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. sale is held twice a school year, once in the fall and once in the spring.
The larger selection of titles, this semester seeing roughly 10,000 books on display, is found during the fall book sale, as more donations are received currently and less books are put on the free table. If a book stays on the free table for multiple sales in a row, Derr said it will eventually be recycled.
The book sale isn’t limited to books, however.
DVDs, CDs and audiobooks are also all present with audiobooks being a popular choice among sale attendees.
“You feel like you can multitask and get more books in,” said Derr.
All items at the sale could be purchased via cash or card as seen by the pricing list below.
Price Chart
- $0.25: Children’s books, music scores
- $0.50: Paperback fiction
- $1: Paperback books, DVDs and CDs, audiobooks, media bundles with multiple discs or volumes
- $2: Hardback books, BTC kits
Deals were also present at the sale. For $2, attendees would be given a bag where they could fit as many things as possible in the bag for no extra charge.
The affordability of the sale also attracts local and state-wide bookstore owners, as Pensees Bookshop and retailers from East St. Louis have spends hundreds of dollars on books, said Nelson.
All funds acquired from the sale are used to fund the library’s inventory and resources to give back to Eastern Illinois University students and help them in their academic careers, according to Derr. An example is the laptop bags handed out to students earlier at the start of the semester were purchased with funds from past sales.
Luke Brewer can be reached at 581-2812 or at lsbrewer@eiu.edu.
