On the morning of Saturday, Oct. 26, a melody of bagpipes will play from the parking lot of the Friends of the Library warehouse on N. Main St. as it has every third weekend in October for years.
At 9 a.m., the bagpipes will stop, a cowbell will ring and hundreds of book, music, game and art collectors will file into the old warehouse to kick off the annual fall Friends of the Library sale.
More than 500,000 donated books, movies, games, pieces of artwork and vinyl records will leave the warehouse over the course of the five-day sale running from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Oct. 26 and from noon to 6 p.m. Oct. 27-30 at 430-B N Main St.
Prices generally range between 25 cents and $5, with a half-price day on the 29th and 10-cent day on the 30th.
“Fiction, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, education, young adults, small children…anything you would like,” Friends of the Library volunteer Sue Morris said. “And the goal is to promote literacy.”
A group of women first organized the Friends of the Library group over 70 years ago by collecting books to donate to the Alachua County public libraries. Today, a couple of hundred volunteers operate the organization with two annual sales. They spend the six months in between each sale sorting through shopping carts and boxes full of donated materials.
Each wooden and metal shelf in the vaulted-ceiling warehouse is organized by a volunteer expert in each genre of the media occupying that space.
Chris Curry is a retired teacher who specializes in the hobby table. Curry used to buy books and audiobooks from Friends of the Library sales for his students, intending for them to be taken home and not returned to his classroom.
Now, he comes back to volunteer as a way of continuing to invest in the schools.
“We want to keep [books] in the hands of people who are going to use [them],” Curry said. “I had all those books, and I didn’t care if they went someplace they should be.”
Sometimes, Morris said, volunteers will find surprise artifacts left behind inside the books while sorting them.
“We’ve found love letters, we’ve found tickets, pictures, all sorts of things. Be careful what you do with your books,” she said. “If we find something of value, if we know who donated it, we’ll make an attempt to get it back. But usually we have no idea.”
Morris noted that this year’s vinyl record collection will feature a Benny Goodman set that will be of particular interest to music-lovers. There will be collections of vintage ephemeral materials, National Geographic and Life magazine collections, posters and Manga comic books.
She also noted the Collector’s Corner is back with even more rare and valuable titles shoppers from all over the country will come to Gainesville to buy.
Among other first editions and signed publications, the Collector’s Corner will showcase an autographed first-edition copy of “Sula” by Toni Morrison and a first-edition copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Through the Brazilian Wilderness” from 1914. Morris said the “super special” books are kept behind lock and key.
The art collection portion of the building displays paintings and prints for sale, as well as frames to go along with them. One volunteer takes the puzzles and board games home to inspect each one to make sure they have all their pieces before customers leave with them.
After the 10-cent day closes out the sale, Friends of the Library opens the warehouse to over 70 non-profits, jails and other organizations that want to take anything remaining on the shelves.
Morris said because the Friends of the Library sale crowds have gotten so large with over a two-hour wait to get into the building on the first day, organizers will no longer allow people to set up chairs the day before to get in line. But that shouldn’t deter anyone from showing up and finding what they’re looking for.
“You never run out,” Morris said. “Even if you’re not here on the first day, you will always find something exciting.”
