What happens when you rescue over a quarter-million books from the incinerator? You have to buy another house to live in, first. Then you have to figure out what to do with all the books when they start to tear your house apart.
When Shaunna Raycraft learned that her neighbor planned to burn 350,000 books, she decided to take over the collection herself. After all, her neighbor’s husband was a collector and many rare books–including a first edition of Black Beauty–could be found in the sprawling stacks. But now Raycraft and her husband might be forced to burn the books themselves because they don’t know what else to do with them.
They tried selling them on eBay. They tried selling them to other collectors. They even tried selling them to used bookstores. But no one wanted to endure the arduous task of sorting through the books.
Apparently they never seriously considered donating the books, though, because now the plan is to burn them anyway. Bookworms all over are unimpressed--a #savethebooks tag has been tracking the debate on twitter.
Link | Image: CBC News
Please let me make this perfectly clear... The building that is housing the book collection is collapsing under the weight of the books. If we do not do something soon we will lose the ENTIRE collection. Most of the books range from 50 to 200 years old and many were rescured from being discarded from libraries and charitiable organizations. I am more than willing to donate a portion of the books and in fact am sending 2000 to Zambia for children in 3 different schools. It was difficult to convey the reality of the situation in a 3 minute blurb on the news so please don't judge me as I am doing my best to save the majority of the collection! To keep posted please join our Facebook Group Raycraft Book Collection! you can volunteer time for sorting if you live close enough and any and all interest will be appreciated!
S. Raycraft
Getting practical in my old age I guess...
What's next? Mountains of old photographs?
Send them to google for digitizing and then burn them.
I've sold books myself in the past. Yeah, it can be time-consuming, but it's also a good, flexible income stream if you split up the work into smaller chunks and prioritize instead of being lazy, stubborn, and idiotic about it, like these people. Learn ten key typing (you'll pick it up along the way), grab a few boxes, type each ISBN into half.com, sort the books by "last sold" price, focus on selling the valuable ones, dump the penny books at a goodwill (a few boxes at a time), and sell the mid-value stuff to a resale shop (a few boxes at a time). It won't get done in one fell swoop, but so what? It's not that hard.