09 February 2023

Book Donation guidelines

Donations of Books are vital to the Library ! Thank you all for your help.

Since opening in 2011, we have added and replaced some 20,000 books. Many of these replacemements come from donations from the Community which saves precious resource in buying them.

Q- What condition of the books do you want? 

A - We are a library!  Donated books MUST be of good quality to be useful. 

Please do not embarrass us with books we cannot use - see exclusions below

One obvious guideline is whether YOU  would borrow it! 

If in doubt please ask first !

Q -  When can I bring books? : 

A - You can bring books at any time we are open - no notice needed -  do call in advance (020 7431 1266) to check we are open.

We can often help in collecting books from cars parked on the yellow lines outside the Library.

Q - What do you do with donated items? 

A - We have a little team dedicated to sorting out all the donations who try to make every book count

Books for the library collection go on the shelves (either as a new addtion or to replace a "tired book"),  those in decent condtion are kept for the next book sale and any that fail to sell are sent to an online seller. We aim make the most of every one.

Q - What type of books should I bring? 

A- All TYPES and Genres of  book - (fiction or non fiction, adult or children) but please see notes below.  

We are most grateful for copies of recently published books.

Q - Do you collect?

A - We would if we had willing volunteers!  If you can help, please let us know.

At the moment, we have one person who can offer.

Please please do NOT  give us any of the following:

• Books without bar codes or ISBN numbers (unless in pristine condition that we can sell) as they will probably be too old.
  
• Books in poor condition, damaged, incomplete, dirty, smelly or mouldy  -  you would be astonished at the items sometimes dumped on us.
  
• Hard backs without the dust jacket.
• Books deleted or removed from another public library - we are proud of the quality of the books we offer. Cast offs will not be good enough for our readers!
• Encyclopedia sets and dictionaries - The information is all on the internet
  
• Magazines and catalogues and bits of paper.
  
• School text books
  
• Music scores
  
• Foreign language books
• Audio CDs and cassettes
• Video DDVs and VHS tapes
  
• Toys and clothes for hygenic reasons