November/December 2002 Vol. 34, no. 6

"What Goes Around Comes Around"
Books, Volunteers, Hard, Hard Work and the True Meaning of Friendship

Kevin Burns, Vice-President, Friends of the National Library of Canada

"So all these books are from the National Library of Canada?" This must be one of the most frequently asked questions during the annual used book sale organized by the Friends of the National Library of Canada. As a matter of fact, none of the books come from the collections of the National Library of Canada.

Now entering its ninth year, this enormous logistical challenge has rapidly become a fixed point in the calendar of bargain hunters and book aficionados. Where else could you find a signed copy of the autobiography of a prime minister and pay just $2 for it? I saw one purchaser literally leap with joy when he turned the page to see Jean Chretien’s signature in the book he had just bought.

With a pricing scale for most books of $1, $2 and $3 a volume, this book sale held each year in a large suburban shopping mall in Ottawa is a treasure trove for avid readers and reluctant or cautious book buyers alike. "I should stop now," said one woman struggling with three tightly packed plastic bags filled to bursting with books. "It’s like an addiction with me. I’ll never read all these, but I hope I will one day." I heard several versions of this comment during the two days I volunteered at this three-day sale. Addiction  --  maybe this is not quite the best word  --  but it’s clear that this sale attracts passionate and knowledgeable people intent on building their home libraries. Some browse in a general fashion, waiting to be surprised by a sudden discovery. Others have a list and scour accordingly. "Have you got any Lovecraft?" Slightly taken aback, I eventually realized that the inquirer meant the author and not a subject. "Try table two!" I suggested with a smile.

Each year this sale opens to a tidal wave of enthusiastic and sometimes overpowering interest from professional book dealers in the region. Their energetic, often frenetic purchasing in the first few hours of the sale gives this event a wonderful and dramatic sense of momentum. They are just one element of the wonderful diversity of customers that this sale continues to attract. People of all ages, all cultures and experiences make their way to this sale. For volunteers, to work one of the tables is to be reminded in a very forceful way of the universal appeal of the written word.

This sale is the result of the labours of a veritable army of volunteers. Each year they transform a mall into a giant bookshop, stocked with more volumes than most bookstores  --  anywhere from 22 000 to 32 000 have been displayed over the years at this sale. This year, some 26 000 volumes were available for purchase. What that means is that volunteers spent thousands of hours sorting and pricing books, which were donated throughout the year, sometimes in an assortment of boxes and bags and occasionally by the truckload, by people in the National Capital Region. Every single book donated is scrutinized by an eagle-eyed team of sorters and pricers. Their quality control ensures that only the best books end up in the sale. They also keep a look out for books that may be of particular interest to the National Library, especially if it happens to be a book that is not in the Library’s current collection, or if the donated book is in better condition than the one in the Library. Books of particular value are kept apart and added to one of the most popular sections of the sale: Specially Priced Books, where prices, thought still reasonable, are much higher than the $1, $2 and $3 general pricing scheme.

Once the pricing and sorting machinery is humming, members of the organizing team work through all the details of transporting the books to the mall and setting them out in a coherent and attractive fashion for customers. Along the way, they make sure there’s good media coverage before and during the sale itself. And it always works. People told me they had heard about the sale on the radio and came to the mall right away. "I saw the photograph in the paper," said another.

As you can imagine, coordinating a venture of this scale (more than a hundred volunteers, a sales force of 95, and transportation for box after box filled with a total of 26 000 volumes) is a major undertaking. Some volunteers give of their time year round, others for the duration of the sale itself. Their support is essential to this sale, and the sale is having an increasing impact on the Library’s ability to continue to add to its Canadian collections. Over the years, to a large extent as a result of the income derived from this sale as well as our Annual Antiquarian Book Auction, the Friends of the National Library of Canada has provided the Library with a rare example of ship-board printing, a 19th-century circus broadside, a poster for an early film version of Anne of Green Gables, a much sought after volume of the Jesuit Relations, a collection of poems by L.M. Montgomery, and a hymnbook, to name but a few.

Final numbers for this year’s sale were still being calculated at the time of writing, but it is clear from our early projections that this will be one of the more profitable sales in its short history. And, once again, the Library’s Friends will be able to make a significant contribution to the Canadiana collections at the National Library of Canada.

"What goes around comes around" is true of the books that continue to appear each year at the sale, the customers who keep coming back to buy more and more books, and the volunteers, who despite various life-changing challenges in the intervening year, still manage to find the energy and the will to work on this amazing project. Perhaps it’s the sight of a young child enthralled with a picture book, the teenager curled on a bench with her cell phone and a book of poems, a young man thoughtfully filling box after box with novels for his father in a long-stay hospital, the delighted elderly woman who found by chance a book about the place where she grew up during the Depression. And so it goes. Books that capture our hearts, our minds, our spirit and our imagination. A sale made possible by volunteers and the donations and purchases of thousands of strangers. And every transaction in this sale is a way for Canadians to give that immeasurable extra support to a treasured cultural institution, the National Library of Canada, about to celebrate its 50th year of serving Canada’s remarkable literary heritage.

For information on the Friends of the National Library of Canada, visit their Web site at www.nlc-bnc.ca/friends.