Getting lost in a good book can be one of the most rewarding and inexpensive vacations from reality; an escape from everyday life can be purchased for as little as $1 at the “Friends of Eugene Public Library
Annual Book Sale,” this weekend at the Lane County Fairgrounds.
Friends of EPL is a nonprofit organization working to raise money to support and fund programs at the library at 100 W. 10th Ave. in downtown Eugene. The book sale, during National Library Week, is the Friends’ biggest fundraiser of the year, raising more than $750,000 for the library since it began 26 years ago.
Although the Friends do all of the sorting, pricing and organizing of the annual book sale, they depend on the community to donate whatever
it can.
“We encourage members of the community to give us books, CDs, records, cassettes, computer games, etcetera,” said Carol Hildebrand, member of the Friends of EPL. “We’ve got about 3,000 music CDs this year. We have tons of children’s books, encyclopedias, fiction, popular non-fiction, biographies, books on tapes — we have everything. We will fill Wheeler Pavilion. There isn’t really enough room there.”
The items for sale won’t be the only things filling up Wheeler Pavilion. Every year, the crowd grows larger.
“By the time we open on Saturday, the line will extend clear out into the parking lot. We have to have someone at the door counting because the Fire Marshal limits the amount of people we can let inside,” Hildebrand said. “We had a couple of dealers who camped outside of the doors overnight last year to be the first ones in. It’s a huge crowd.”
One reason so many people turn up for this event is because of the wonderful and sometimes rare finds that can be bought for less than the price of a gallon of gas.
“About 80 percent of the books are $1, and that’s in both hardback and paperback,” Hildebrand said. “CDs will be a couple of bucks, DVDs will be
$5, and records will be 50 cents. There are some really good bargains.”
Although the book sale is beneficial for both the library and the community, the members of Friends, who are all volunteers, get more out of the sale than people realize.
“We do (the book sale) because we’re raising money, and we’re helping the library offer better programs, but we also love books and we love to work with them,” Hildebrand said. “We love to be the biggest book recycler in the area. Almost all of these books are donations, and they are not going to get tossed; they’re going to get somebody new to read them and own them and pass them on. And that’s important, too.”
“It leads to good feelings all around,” Kirby Mills, a librarian, said.
The book sale will be held in Wheeler Pavilion at the Lane County Fairgrounds Saturday and Sunday. Hours: Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Donations can be dropped off any time of the year at the donation drop-box in the covered parking area underneath the Eugene Public Library.

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