Book Sale of the Century

It started in October when Carl and I walked into our MCC library and realized that it was almost impossible to find anything, it was that full.

Then, someone came in and wondered if they owed the library any books. After going through about 500 library cards, realized that he owed 23 books. Once we sent out the remaining 400 and some library cards, we only recovered 200 books. We needed to figure out a better way.

So we made a proposal to the administration committee to reorganize the library under programs and then a small section under general, like health, theology, culture, history, Spanish books etc. We don't have a librarian to keep track of everything, and there were so many books that no one was using. Plus, there was no more room in the library.

We had no idea how much work it would be.
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We first started culling through the sections like language, theology, and general reading. For every book we kept, we set aside 5 to move out. Slowly but methodically, programs came through, looked and set aside books that they could use for their program. And then we started the daunting task of carrying all of them out and stacking them in the casa de la cancha.

By mid-March, almost everyone that could had gone through the books had and it was time to get the book sale ready. Centro Menno also went through its library, all the extra textbooks, tapes etc. Almost 700 books came just from that library alone. Do you know how many books we culled out of the libraries? Any guesses?

4763.

Crazy eh?

So for three days last week, we opened the gates for people to come by the books. We sold them by the stack; 3cm of books = 1B = 14 cents. If you could imagine it being in the library, it was for sale. Colony Mennonites came. Bolivian Mennonites from the churches came. Missionaries, other NGOs, parents of MCCers, even the neighbours across the street came to buy. Our biggest buyers were the students from the university, especially those learning English. It was crazy.

It's not like we made a ton of money, that wasn't the point. We reorganized the library so now there is much more space and we are keeping what we're using. Someone asked if we had any more books in the library. Oh yes, a few thousand still. We still have a bit of work to do to get it looking the way we want, but it's a huge improvement. And another satisfaction is seeing those people walk out with resources that they really needed and will enjoy using. No more dusty shelves for those books.

All the rest left over from the sale (some are really great) will be boxed up and we will contact other mission organizations or NGOs to see if they want them. Unfortunately, some will end up being recycled at a profit of 1B per kilo. Well, for books with the titles "I'll get to Heaven before you!" and "Shit-man", I don't think that's too much of a loss.



Whew. Now on to the next project.