Rare Book Monthly
Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It
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The Bookman.org in San Diego, California, has donated over one million books to local jails, provides books to homeless centers, senior centers, and teachers, and has given books to the needy in 37 foreign countries. For more information, visit www.TheBookman.org website. Many states have some sort of organization that collects books for prisoners, homeless shelters, and so on, so call around a bit and try to find those orphan books a home.
There are a number of groups that send books to foreign countries where they don't have books to throw away, as we do, but need them desperately. Bridge to Asia supplies books, journals, databases, and other educational materials that are essential to teaching and research but too costly for most developing countries to afford. They have sent about 6 million books to more than 1,000 schools in China in the past 16 years. Their Ministry of Education pays for book-shipping, various institutions donate staff and offices, and dozens of university librarians and support staff give their time to sort and distribute books to more than 600 universities in China. See them at www.bridge.org.
Here is my favorite! If I knew one of my books was being toted across the desert on a camel or a donkey, I would be jazzed. The Donkey Library is in Zimbabwe, the Camel Library operates from Kenya near the unstable border with Somalia. They started out in 1996 with three camels, taking books to the poorest and least educated of the poor, and now have 12 camels that travel to four settlements per day, four days per week. The camels and the librarian who rides them, bring the books to barefoot village schools, adults and children, sometimes laying the books out under a big tree, so the villagers can take their pick. They get to keep these precious books for two weeks. But the climate and moving is hard on the books and they need more books all the time. Children's storybooks in English and Swahili are the most popular, followed by general fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The Book Aid International staff sorts and selects books and journals and packs cases of books ready for shipment to Kenya. BAI pays for all transport and freight of books from London to Nairobi Inland Container Depot or www.bookaid.org. You might want to find out about shipping from the U.S. You gotta see it to believe it so go to their website.
