I started on the comic pretty late, so I wasn’t able to color it tonight. The finish piece will be up sometime tomorrow evening after I get home from work.
I spent my weekend cleaning and organizing my room/workspace. It was at that point when I realized I’m surrounded by graphic novels/comics and resource books. They’re on the floor, under my bed, in boxes, on the table, etc. I definitely need book shelves. Which I ended up going to IKEA, but coming back home empty handed.
Question for anyone: Where can I donate used books? I have a lot of programming, software books that are outdated. I don’t want to throw them away. I guess I could recycle them? If anyone has any tips, I would love to hear it.
Thanks.
This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 1:17 AM and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Your local library or school might take them
You could try the local library or find a used book store that will take donated books. Worst case, toss them in the recycling bin.
When I was a teenager, I caught my programming teeth on old COBOL books in the library. This was long before I ever had access to a computer with a programming language. I learned the fine art of flow charts that helped me in my early college classes, and still have my flow chart template from 1992. ;)
A local community collage, or perhaps a homeless shelter that has teaching programs. There are probably lots of low funded schools teaching programs that wold love the books even if they are a little outdated
When it comes to old books in the programing genre, my experience has been: “just toss them”, preferably in the ‘cycling of course. Library’s don’t want them (they’ve frequently got a book on that subject they’re pondering whether or not to keep in circulation if they wanted one), used book stores won’t buy them (because often they never sell), and I’ve not had much luck with the other sources either.
If all else fails, and the library won’t take them, or the homeless shelters won’t, find a struggling college student taking the courses. Sometimes not having to pay that extra $100-$200 or having another study aid or reference makes all the difference, in my experience.
I’m a librarian. I can tell you that libraries both want and NEED those kinds of books to be donated!
Especially public/city/county libraries. Only the college/university libraries tend to carry tech books, and those are hardly open to just about anyone. The few tech books libraries do have can be really old, so just about anything newer will do. It’s unlikely that your editions are too old; libraries are so starved for tech books that anything in decent shape should be added to the collection, even if it is a year or two old. It’s better than a decade or more for some of the C++ books I’ve seen . . .
Also, your donation should be tax-deductible; I’ve yet to hear of a library that takes donations but doesn’t offer receipts for April’s taxes.
When I moved about a year ago, I found out the library in the university town I lived in wasn’t very interested in my no-longer-needed technical books, as they had plenty.
But I felt bad about throwing away perfectly good books, so I mentioned to a few people I was looking for a new home for them, and soon I got in contact with a librarian in a nearby town who was more than willing to take them. She told me the local high school and community college were trying to help students from deprived families break into technical fields, but was having problems getting enough books and equipment. So I spread the word around, and she soon had stacks of boxes full of books to deal with. Students are very generous when leaving college!
So even if one library doesn’t have a need for your books, ask around, because others may need them!
I don’t know where you live but if they have a half price books around or something like it you could sell them or just give them to a goodwill or something like that.
I have to say, I really like the shading on this one.
In the area I live most schools, colleges, and libraries have book recycling bins in their parking lots. Just drive up and drop them in.
I just want to second what nightmorph and others have said. Go to your local library and see how they take donations. The library I worked at would take tons of donations and either use them in the library collection, sell them in a in library book store to the public for a dollar or two with the money going back to the library budget for book purchases, or dispose of them (normally books that were very moldy). You will get a receipt that lets you deduct your donation and help provide some funding/resources to libraries when most cities are cutting funding to them.
Local library (community or city, not college). Also they take software too. My local library has a collection of video games and some software. I donate games that are over a few years old, stuff that won’t move on trading sites. You can get a pretty good tax write off if you keep track of your book / software donations and get donation receipts.
You could also try a service called Better World Books. The books that they sell help fund literacy initiatives worldwide. They have a buy it program where they can price out your books and give you some money for your troubles. They also provide a free shipping label to ship your books to them. It’s betterworldbooks.com.
Recycle if nothing else offers. Of you can google ‘donate textbooks and come up with things like this: http://www.bigwords.com/book/index.php?z=textbook_donation
I am a librarian and any local library will be happy to take the books!
My boyfriend and I recently donated about two hundred history books (we’re bookworms) to our local college library and received a letter of thanks from the president of the college!
These economic times have truly hurt libraries, even academic ones, so really consider this option.
Yeah, I had a lot of books too once that were very outdated and donated them to the library in my town and the ones that the library didn’t use, they sold in a book fair that is held once every three months to raise money for the library so yeah, someone will want them. =)
You could also give your local Freecycle a try: http://www.freecycle.org/
I was going to suggest the same. I know a few people who use Freecycle regularly. It’s a great way of getting stuff into the hands of people who can use them.
Try your friendly neighborhood book thing! It’s a charity down in Baltimore which takes and gives books for free!
http://www.bookthing.org
I second going for The Book Thing! I get/give stuff from/to them all the time.
Some cool rare finds too if you’re willing to hunt for them.
Montgomery County has a good “friends of the library” program where you can donate used books to. Either that or you can release them into the wild bookcrossing
Donate the books and software to your local library…
I once donated 300 hard bound books to a library and came away from the experience with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment…a lot better than just throwing them away…
Just a suggestion.
You can usually get credit for books if you take them in to a used book store. In DC, I would suggest:
http://www.abebooks.com/
o_O;; Wow I just did the same thing. I was even looking at a IKEA catalog that I had uncovered while cleaning which weirds me out even more.(got shelf unit elsewhere though ^^) You think this is like some sort of global mind thing? LOL! \(^o^)/
Libraries and students are the best, but if they don’t want them, try the “Free” section on Craigslist – I bet someone will want them.
All above are great suggestions.
If you have “newer” books you can sell them on Amazon – Alot of college kids out there look for used books.
But your local libraries will take just about all of your old programming books. LOL most of them have such outdated material your books will seem “new” to them!
:O you can give them to me!!! I need some programming books.
I’ve got two stand-bys for books I don’t need anymore. The first is swaptree, where you can trade them in for books you do want. The second, more D.C. based, is Books for America. http://www.booksforamerica.org/ They take all kinds of books, CD’s and my huge stack of VHS’ when I last cleaned out my apartment. They have a drop off location in DuPont circle and if you’ve got a large enough collection, may be willing to come pick them up.
check out your local community i just unloaded a bunch of outdated Graphic Novel to a five dollar books door.
What kind of books Hawk? I’m sure I could take a few off your hands. Gladly pay for shipping. :)
Otherwise, donate them to a library or a college’s student resource office (for students in financial need or under privilege). Those are funded by the state or gov and could use all the help they can get.
if you wanna donate them, most colleges have book drives, for africa or south america.
if your wanting money off it, then amazon
Yeah I don’t want to sound rude but homeless people/people in third world countries probably don’t have a use for books like that. Donate them to either a school library or your local one; they always take free books if they’re in good condition.
Oh, and for really inexpensive bookshelves, check out Staples. They’re doing a huge sale right now. I’m off to pick up a 6 foot tall, 5 shelf bookcase for $30.
Id say the com college library or nerd books are a good start so that the graphic arts and cosc majors can mess with them.
http://www.nerdbooks.com/contactus.php
there should be something like that out where you are
Books can be donated to goodwill, the salvation army, veterans affairs. I know that VA accepts many things, clothes, footwear, toys, so other things other than book can go there.
with this comic, I think the comic looks pretty alright in gray scale.
Yeah, I will totally take some or even all of those off your hands, I am forever in need of more programming / computer books. I’ll gladly pay for shipping too!
There is a bookstore chain called “Book Off” its based off the japanese chain store of the same name. They’ll buy your books and you might even find some new ones.
Craglist…
I was having the same problem with feeling like my life was being overrun by books. I recently moved my entire apartments worth of stuff into one room, when I moved in with a few friends.
I’ve also destroyed two shelving units because I have so many books and no where to but them.
We had a huge sale on the stacking colorful plastic crates at work a couple weeks ago though. They look like milk crates only in bright colors.
I took them and hung them on my wall, with the bottom of the crate against the wall in a really awesome pattern. They were cheap they, are pretty heavy duty, the don’t take up floor space, easy to expand if you need more room and they make moving super easy later. You can even space them out so you can use the tops and sides of them for more shelving.
It took some time to get them all up on the wall but I have no more books laying around everywhere taking over what little space I have.
OT, but… Interesting tone/texture effect for this comic. I think personally I prefer the other grungier, more… natural looking textures, but it still looks pretty hot :)
If you take them to a library, take them to one that doesn’t look full. I can say the public library I work for tosses donated dated books by the box full because we don’t have room for them.
I was all excited that I’d be able to say “Take them to the library!”. But it seems the entire world beat me to it.
Seeing StarLi’s comment though, I’d add that you should ask ahead of time what their policy on it is instead of just dumping them in the bookdrop. Even if they’re older computer books they could still put them in a used booksale like we do.
Also ask if they do tax receipts if you want a little something something back.
We do do book sales, but our book sale closet fills up amazingly fast and once we’re out of room we have no where for the poor things.
http://www.booksavers.org/
So I’m going to say you need to donate them to your local prison rather than your local library, only because schools and library was already taken though.
CRAIGSLIST FREE SECTION
If you wanted to take the time, you could visit PaperbackSwap.com. You post the books by ISBN number and people all over the country can request them from you. You mail them to people as they request them and then you get credits to redeem for other books. It’s a free site and you only have to pay for shipping the requested books.
Or you could donate them to your local middle and high schools, career development/technical center or have a sale on/offline. Sign em or something and let people buy for a few dollars. why not make a few bucks???
I’ll take them my school could use them for the programming classes.
[...] you guys are awesome. Thank you for the tips on how to deal with my old books. Who needs google when I have [...]
Many colleges have textbook buybacks at the end of each semester. There’s a chance you could get a bit of moolah for very little effort if you go that route. That’s what I’ve always done with mine. And there’s always half.com and such.
I seem to recall y’all being in the College Park area, but I might be getting you completely mixed up with another webcomic. If you are in the area, Books for International Goodwill (http://www.big-books.org/) takes all book donations.