By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
When the Yachats Library started its used book sale more than 25 years ago it involved scattering boxes of books on the floor of its building on West Seventh Street.
Now the annual fundraiser for the library fills the Yachats Commons multipurpose room with almost 10,000 volumes and draws 500 people – even rare book buyers — to the two-day event.
“It’s obviously grown over the years,” says Sandy Dunn, president of Friends of the Yachats Library. “I’m still surprised every year how far people go to attend book sales.”
Friends of the Yachats Library annual book sale is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 29-30. It is the nonprofit’s major fundraiser of the year in support of the all-volunteer operated city-owned library.
All year the library collects donated books, DVDs, books on tape and even puzzles. They are stored in the 501 Building and volunteer’s houses around town until the last weekend of Oregon’s Spring Break. On Thursday volunteers will haul them to the Commons, where they are laid out binder-side up by categories on rows of tables.
For sale will be almost new, gently used, old treasures, mysteries, cookbooks, gardening books, fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, biography, travel, history, and humor in hardcover and paperback. On Friday the hardbacks, trade paperbacks/softcovers are $1, paperbacks are 50 cents. There will be a specially priced section including rare books, signed copies, book sets, and coffee table books. The sale also includes DVDs and music CDs priced at $1 each, puzzles for $2 each, and audio books for $3.
Saturday is bag day. Purple Yachats Library cloth bags can be purchased for $2. Buyers can bring an old library bag (black, teal or purple) or newly purchased Yachats Library bag and fill it for $3.
“Our goal on Saturday is to get rid of books,” Dunn said.
Refreshments are available in the kitchen and art for sale by the Yachats Arts Guild.
Library history
Dunn, a former City Council member, is still tracing the history of the Yachats Library. Its roots go back to July 1930 when someone donated books to the Yachats Ladies Club. The club built a closet in its Pontiac Street building and started a lending library, open 2-5 p.m. Wednesdays.
The Ladies Club discontinued the library in 1955, Dunn said, selling the book collection for $23.50. The library moved – Dunn is not sure of the year – to Yachats Elementary School and then again in 1973 to the current building on Seventh Street, built by local volunteers and students from Angell Job Corps.
Today, the library is open every afternoon a week except Sunday. There is no paid staff; some 40 volunteers do the work and a board oversees operations.
“There are no fines, no dues,” Dunn says. “We give library cards to anybody. It provides a lot for people up the river, not just people in town.” The library has issued 2,400 library cards, three times Yachats’ population.
The library installed computers in 2004 and connected to the internet five years later. It’s common to see a visitor in a parking spot outside using the library’s Wifi connection.
Dunn is not quite sure when the book sale started, but estimates “probably in the early 1990s,” organized by library volunteers.
Friends of the Yachats Library started in 2004 because the library needed a nonprofit arm to apply for grants. It has a three-member board: Dunn as president, Maggie Marshall is the treasurer, Nancy Lamdik is secretary.
Now, proceeds from the annual book sale – about $5,000 a year – go to the nonprofit’s treasury to support library operations, special programs and to help buy furnishings.
Dunn says the nonprofit has raised more than $50,000 through its sales and grants the past four years to help with the library’s proposed expansion. Three years ago it was thought the library would move to the 501 Building, which the city had purchased. But renovating and remodeling proved too expensive, so now the city and its Library Commission are working on plans to expand the Seventh Street building.
Dunn says the Friends’ money – if it can get some grants extended – will go to help equip and furnish the remodeled library.
Storage an issue
But Dunn warns that the book sale’s future is threatened by disappearing storage, which needs to be dry and minimally heated. The city plans to move its offices into the 501 Building, where currently most of the books are stored.
“An ideal situation, maybe down the road, is a book store to sell year-round,” Dunn said. But the right retail space at the right price, she said, would need to come available.
Little by little the Friends group is using eBay to list more valuable books, seeing if they sell, Dunn said, and pulling them off for the annual sale when they don’t.
“We have a couple of people who know book values,” she said. “They’ll put them on eBay for awhile to see what happens.”
But the real fun comes Friday and Saturday, when people come from far and wide to pick up a paperback or hardbound volume of their favorite author.
Book dealers are the first to scramble in the door Friday, Dunn said, armed with scanners and computers to check a book’s value and see if it can easily be resold.
“They will buy by the box full,” she said.
The group advertises the Yachats sale from Tillamook to Coos Bay and from Salem to Eugene.
“It’s amazing how many people are from out of town,” Dunn said. “People seek it out. People travel to buy books.”
At the end of the day Saturday, volunteers will box up any leftover. The books go into storage until they can be given to thrift stores or donated to prison libraries.
And when it opens at noon Monday, the library will start taking donations again for next year.
