To prepare for the weekend’s Friends of the Library fall book sale, volunteers Ron Beauchamp and Peter Levine are finishing up organizing the music corner, complete with records, eight-track tapes and cassettes.
The Friends of the Library Book Sale, at 430-B N. Main St., occurs twice a year to raise money for the Alachua County Library District so it can purchase more land for its library systems, fund its bookmobile projects and provide scholarships to long-time library employees who wish to earn college degrees, explained Jim Dahlman, a volunteer.
The fall sale will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday and will last until Wednesday. Prices range from 25 cents to $4. All the items on sale were donated, and the number of this year’s donations has exceeded that of previous years.
“If we had any more, we wouldn’t have any room to put it,” Dahlman said.
Currently, the 75-foot–wide, 150-foot-long warehouse has about 500,000 items divided into 40 categories, including books, music, movies, artwork, posters, magazines and puzzles.
Levine, the organization’s vice president, said people start lining up on Friday night and by Saturday morning, the line snakes through the parking lot and continues down Main Street.
“It’s kind of a controlled chaos in the first 15 minutes we‘re open,” he added.
In the first half hour, 500 to 700 people are expected to come in, led by a bagpiper in an attempt to keep things orderly.
The sale also includes a collector’s corner where first-edition books, novels signed by the author and a set of five watercolor paintings by Jessica Rockwell will be sold at prices higher than the rest of the items. For more information visit http://folacld.org/.
