Book Donations

How to Donate:

We appreciate your delivering donations in boxes (cardboard, wood, plastic, any shape or size) or in shopping bags (plastic or paper) if you have them. If you do not have a container then please stack them on the table in the lower level lobby at Gordon Avenue Library.

Where to Donate:

The Friends of the Library is located in the Gordon Avenue Library Basement Lobby (off the parking lot). The Gordon Avenue Library is located at 1500 Gordon Avenue, Charlottesville, VA. Inside the lobby, to the left as you enter, there is a large wooden table upon which donations should be placed.

Large donations should be brought to the Gordon Avenue Library. Smaller donations (of 3 or less boxes or bags) to any branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. See jmrl.org for branch locations and hours.

If unable to deliver donations, arrangements can be made for pick-up. Call 434.977.8467 or email info@jmrlfriends.org.

When NOT to Donate:

In order to prepare and operate our sales efficiently, we respectfully ask that the public refrain from making donations to any of our branches one week prior to the opening day of a sale, for the duration of each sale, and for two days after a sale is completed.

What we would like to receive:

• books on all subjects, of all ages, for all ages, in a condition that will sell
• records, compact discs, sheet music
• specialist magazines in fine woodworking, military and naval history

What we DO NOT want donated:

Books that are in a poor or bad condition, i.e. having one or more of the following:

• broken spine; missing pages or covers
• water, food or other stains; mildew; rot; excessively yellowed pages
• crudely, heavily or excessively annotated, highlighted, underlined or otherwise marked

Books for which there is no ready market:

• Reader’s Digest Condensed Books; 1950s Book Club Editions of hard back general fiction
• Hallmark or Gibson books; Harlequin paperback romances
• Omnibus editions of books categorized as general fiction, however, we DO accept omnibus editions of fiction in crime/mystery, westerns and science fiction.

Other items we cannot sell:

• books bearing the “Daedalus Books Complimentary Copy” stamp
• home recorded audio or video tapes
• general magazines – simply because we no longer sell them
• audio cassette tapes
• VHS video cassettes
• encyclopedias

Please note that donations that we cannot use are disposed of in one of the following ways:

• given to another worthy cause: e.g. schools, institutions, self-help groups, etc;
• made available to the public through the library branches’ free paper-back book boxes
• ecologically recycled