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Health & Fitness

Join your Friends at the book sale

It happens twice each year. A crowd lines up at St. Michael City Center early in the morning, for what amounts to a treasure hunt.  That hunt continues this Saturday (Oct. 26), when the Fall Book Sale is hosted by the Friends of the St. Michael- Albertville- Hanover Library.  

For just a few dollars, you'll be able to stock your reading shelf, thanks to the donations of thousands of used books, DVDs and other media from your neighbors in the community.

The one-day sale, which happens each spring and fall, is a primary fundraiser for Friends of the Library. All money brought in goes to supporting our local library here in St. Michael.  Popular activities such as the Summer and Winter Reading programs are assisted with funds from the sale. New and updated library furnishings, be it shelving or kids area amenities, are also a direct result of our sales.

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So how does our sale work? In the months leading in, library patrons drop off boxes and bags of their used books, DVDs, and other media for donation.  Friends' volunteers later sort them into categories: adult fiction, hardcovers, trade paperbacks, kids board books, and so on. Volunteers also take part in sale planning and promotion.

A day or so before the sale, we move all the books into the Council Chambers for final sorting and setup. And come 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, the doors are thrown open.  

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Paperbacks and VHS videos will be priced at 50 cents. Hardcovers, DVDs and trade paperbacks are $1. Some best-seller items and special sets are priced as marked. 

Many choose to take advantage of Friends book bags. These re-usable canvas bags can be purchased for $15 and filled to the brim with books (only specially priced books and DVDs are exempt from these bags).  For those who've purchased a Friends bag at a prior sale, refilling it costs just $10.

We see our sale as primarily for area residents planning to read the books they buy. In fact, a good number of the items you'll find might be in their 3rd or 4th go-round at our Friends sale. Great books staying in the community is a pretty cool thing. For this reason, we discourage the use of hand-held scanners, which are typically used by resellers to find high-value bar codes. If we see books being scanned in the morning hours of the sale, a Friends volunteer will ask that the device be put away. 

At 1:00 pm, we briefly clear the room to start our Bag Sale.  This is "clearance" time, when paper grocery bags can be purchased and filled for just $2.  That's a lot of books for a couple bucks.  By 2:00 pm the sale is closing down, and many of our buyers are already a few chapters deep into a new story.

We hope to see you on Saturday, October 26th (8 a.m. to 2 p.m.) at the Fall Book Sale. If you're interested in volunteering with the Friends of the Library, just ask at the sale, or visit our website at StMichaelLibraryFriends.org.

This post by Howie Burke, who serves as president for Friends of the St. Michael-Albertville-Hanover Library.

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