The Friends of the Library Used Bookstore presented the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library Board of Trustees with a check for $30,000 on Jan. 11.

The sum was raised by the 40 volunteers who sell books during the store’s open season, April through November.

“We’re so happy to have hit this year’s goal,” said the Friends Board President Ann Kelley, who’s been with the used bookstore for close to 10 years. “To think that we’ve gone from holding bake sales to selling some books to raising this kind of money is always astounding.”

The Friends support represents approximately 10% of BHML’s annual budget.

“The Used Bookstore operation is testament to the peninsula's culture of literacy,” said BHML Executive Director Joanna Breen. “The volunteers that provide the services of the Used Bookstore are tireless advocates for the role of the public library in the community.” 

Used Bookstore volunteers provide a valuable community service by processing and triaging book donations from members of the community. Books are donated for all types of reasons: folks weed their own collections, clean out the estate of a loved one, move out of town, or are finally ready to part with their old children’s books. 

Used Bookstore volunteers do a tremendous amount of work to process these donations, sort, assess, price, and sell the books. It is physical labor, hauling bags and boxes of books, it is retail work selling books and cashing out at the end of the day, and it is volunteer time that supports the programs and services of the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library.  

“It’s inspiring, and truly enhances the commitment to the work we do,” Breen said.

Kelley said the volunteers love working at the bookstore as much as they love supporting the library.

“Most of the volunteers really enjoy the opportunity to talk to people from all over the world about books and things; it’s just relaxed and fun,” she said. 

“Going through the books that are donated and finding a treasure, that’s always fun too,” she added.

The bookstore will open again for the 2020 season in mid-April. Until then, they ask that people hold their donations, as there’s no space to process or store them.

Once reopened, the bookstore will gratefully accept donations of gently used books, DVDs, and CDs. They cannot display or sell old textbooks, encyclopedias, or dictionaries, pre-2005 travel guides and atlases, or torn, soiled or musty books, all of which need to go to the dump.