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Community Corner

Hitting the Books!

The Friends of the Scarsdale Library gear up for their annual book sale.

With the economy still in a downturn, more people are reading books and donating them more than ever. So mark your calendars! The Friends of the Scarsdale library are gearing up for their annual book sale in the Spencer Scott Room at the library.

The sale will run from September 11-19. It's books galore! There's every category you can possibly think of whether you're a bookworm or a casual reader.

The sale kicks off with a preview from 8-10:30 am on Saturday morning specifically for the benefactors that contribute monetarily to the Friends of the Scarsdale Library; and then the sale opens to the public at 11 am. For the preview sale, there's a 15-book limit. For the regular sale it's unlimited.

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Organizers are hoping for good weather because the paperbacks will be sold outside.

The trade paperbacks are $1.50 and the hardcovers $3.00 and the paperbacks are $1.00-2.00 each. They have a wide selection of children's' books which range from $1.00 for hard covers and only .50 for soft-covers to encourage children to read. Literacy is the key to success.

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They will be offering some real bargains worth checking out that will be half-price, including specially priced autographed books, art books (priced slightly higher) and collectibles. This year, they will extend the books sale because of the large selection of books they will be offering. The library still has books left over from last year!

The books that are left over are donated to non-profit institutions once the sale is over and some of the mass-market paperbacks are sold to book dealers.

Cathy Steves is running the book sale this year. She said some of the most popular categories are fiction, cookbooks, biographies, children's' books, autographed collectible books, CDs and DVDs. Anyone can donate as long as the books are usable and in stable condition. No textbooks, or encyclopedias will be accepted but current reference books will be accepted. They have 30-40 volunteers helping out this year. For some of them, it's their summer job.

"They come in every day and sort the books—we really couldn't do without them because every year we get more books," Steves said.

She didn't mention any particular titles that were popular but said the majority of them are fiction such as Harry Potter and Twilight.

"I really think the real value of the sale are the non-fiction books because we have such depth and over 30 boxes of cookbooks and about that many biographies so they go to the section that they're interested in," she explained. "It's remarkable how generous the Westchester community is (not just Scarsdale). All of the books are donated and there are no library discards. Some people who don't want to wait for the library will buy a book and then give it to us. Right now, we're currently displaying the most sellable books and once the book sells we will put another book in its place so people should keep coming back to the sale."

The proceeds from the book sale go to the Scarsdale Library to fund various projects.

Last year, most of the funds went to buy the book kiosk at the Scarsdale train station. The money also helped redecorating the children's' room.

For more information, log on to the library website at www.scarsdalelibrary.org.

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