Book Sales

• Annual July Sale at the Pine Street Arena coincides with the Potsdam Summer Festival. The first year we had over 20,000 books and profited $4500 for the library expansion fund. July, 2003; we profited $8800 for the library.

• Our smaller Holiday Sale is at the store and we try to present books which could be given as gifts.

Book Sale - May 2000 The Potsdam Public Library and The Friends of The Library group once again extend a hearty thank you to Clarkson University.

Bookstore

     Our store in the basement of the Civic Center, under the Potsdam Public Library, is currently open 3 hours per week; on Saturdays, from 10am to 1pm. During that time, our sales usually run $150 per week. The books are mostly donated by area residents, with some coming from the discards at the library. 

The Bookstore Hanneke LaFountain, President of the Friends Of The Library, stocks shelves on the right while a customer is browsing on the left.

We want to expand our hours but need more volunteers to do so. The work would involve selling and perhaps stocking some of the shelves. Join the Friends.


Book sort

     Also, at our bookstore site, is our sorting area. As donated books are received, they are sorted into 32 categories, depending on value and content; it is the most interesting area of all -- "you never know what is going to be in the next box!".  Our donors are very generous with their most precious books and we try to make sure the library reaps the full benefit of their worth. Of course, the library often finds sought-after books for the collection, and that saves money which would have been spent buying these titles. Volunteers are subjected to a brief training session, so that books are sorted uniformly, finding the optimal place for each donated book...

Internet Sales  

     Our newest venture are the book sales at Amazon.com using the Marketplace -- a very fascinating part of our book sales -- where a good number of books are sold at higher prices than would ordinarily be received in the bookstore or at a regular book sale. This area needs volunteers, to research books on the internet, so that they could be competitively priced.  A volunteer would experience a brief training session, so that the research is done uniformly, and so that the conditions of books would be described in a consistent manner.  Volunteers need only to be intrigued by books and have minimal computer skills.