Thank you Friends of the SF Public Library for 130,000 books

130,000 books, records, and videos were donated and then cataloged, de-duplicated, and readied for scanning and long term preservation in 2 days.   Thank you to the Friends of SFPL for our largest public donation ever.   With this, we believe we are ready to handle any size donation.   Please think of us as a good home for your library or collection or extras.

Every year residents of San Francisco donate over 100,000 books to be part of book sales to support the SFPL.   Each year there is a massive sale, and at the end of it, they donate what is left to a worthy cause.   This is the second year that we were that worthy cause.

* 20 volunteers (thank you!)
* 20 staff members
* 130,000 books, records, videos
* we cataloged 40,000 of them over the 2 days, and of those 20,000 were ones we did not have.   90,000 to go.
* we will preserve the originals for scanning and for the long term in our Physical Archive
* the duplicates will go to other worthy causes.
* and it was a blast.

Please donate books!  info@archive.org

20 thoughts on “Thank you Friends of the SF Public Library for 130,000 books

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  4. Taxed Enough Already

    What would SF think of a town of a mere 18,000 on the east coast that wants to build a $12 million library to house 150,000 books?

    1. Buzz

      Well, considering that a new church (just nearing completion, and not all that big of one, either) here in the Seattle area cost $8 million, $12 million for a 150,000 book library doesn’t seem unreasonable.

    2. Ronald Lee Still

      I’ll go one farther. How about an unincorporated county area, without a library or book committed to the 100,000 new subdivision residents living where the local libraries and politicians say “Not one book, one dollar, or one hour of labor will be given to this unincorporated community and its children for a library.” Volunteers have gathered 180,000 donated books in three years and are busy getting the right Dewey numbers and genres on the spine labels, without using tax dollars. Volunteers built hundreds of 8′ high, 4′ wide, plain pine board bookcases in their spare time and Barnes and Noble donated 90 linear feet of “A” style metal book shelves. A bookmobile to hold 10,000 adult books as an annex was designed in a used 40′ shipping container. Our do-it-ourselves bookmobile saved $320,000 and only sacrificed a little mobility. Now that it is permitted, it can be moved on a flat bed within 24 hours. We bought a used container, high density foam boards for insulation, electric/CAT 5/telephone wiring, a small AC/heater combo, low energy strip lights, sheet rock, boards, screws, nails, security system with emergency lights, smoke detectors, and safety door. We spent about $1,000 and bought 500 new books – mostly Scholastic books, a 30 book set of fiction for Juveniles, and a few dozen New York Times top ten fiction and non-fiction. We can easily spend $1,000 monthly buying all the labels, bar codes, and library cards. We saved about $7 million compared to the buying practices of tax funded libraries and then we asked for and received a gift of $1.4 million in new books to place in local homes. Our book collection is rather unusual, with its rare books, good selection of fiction and non-fiction, including North Carolina history, not found in local libraries, and wide range of books from board books and beginning reading to college level. Our first and temporary location is an old unheated, not air conditioned, no running water warehouse. We have our own therapy dog team and invited other teams to join us for our first scheduled children’s reading program.

      1. Mike

        For those that were curious about where the library is- this was under Mr Still’s link.

        Cleveland Library is an I.R.S. recognized public charity operating a library with donations, not taxes. According to North Carolina Library Association records, all public libraries were privately funded, until the General Assembly authorized Durham to become the first town in North Carolina to raise taxes to fund a public library. North Carolina still has one of the last of the 16 subscription libraries in the country.

  5. pub

    This should be the Library Blog, not the Way Back Machine blog. I can’t find any info on the Way Back Machine. Your Way Back site used to be a lot better than it is.

  6. Lee

    A truly historic occasion! Keep it up. The generations that follow will be so grateful for all your hard work. Thank you for all you do!

  7. Homer Otto Goodall

    If each person would scan one book each time they used this site then that would be 10 million books a day entering this site.

  8. Homer Otto Goodall

    I have quite a few old paperbacks that are beginning to crumble. I will be uploading some of them soon. One that was a hardback I had to destroy it to save it. Thank for whoever dropped me the note about my 10 TB of old films. My friend gave me a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It was a copy that was used by the USO at the end of World War 2. I am currently going through more old hard drives trying to salvage some old cartoons.

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