Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
To be fair, that is a somewhat different situation since the TPL is requesting books which are in high demand while northern communities are often the victims of book drives. While those book drives may be well intentioned, and the books may be excellent, they rarely reflect the needs or interests of the community and the volume exceeds the community's ability to properly manage them (e.g. no dedicated librarians or the only librarian may be a children's librarian).
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I have never encountered a book drive in the north, not to say they don't exist. Food drives held by libraries are fairly common though.
To be clearer and fairer, most remote communities I have been in accept all book donations and often house them in a separate room. Sometimes this area has more books than the library and often operates as a book exchange as well.
The books aren't catalogued, but some libraries go to great lengths to shelve them by categories and/or authors especially in the school libraries. (I have only seen one non school library that circulates donations) It is a great community service and probably not in the librarians job description.
Helen