“We have a book town,” says Peter Manno, manager of the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. The group is excited to welcome community members into the former Northside Library building this weekend, for the first book sale Friends of JMRL has held since the onset of the pandemic last year. “The sales are a big part of people’s lives,” Manno says.
Friends of JMRL is a nonprofit organization that helps financially support the library system, and also manages the Books Behind Bars program, which ships requested books to incarcerated individuals throughout the commonwealth.
Friends supports its mission through giant, biannual book sales that can bring in as much as $120,000. The sales have become a community staple over the years. Manno says he knows one volunteer who went to her first book sale in 1965, when she was in high school, and has been to every sale since.
Like everyone else, Friends of JMRL had to get creative when COVID shut everything down. The lockdown came right before its spring 2020 sale. “We were poised to have a sale,” Manno says. “We were full, we had our books out on the shelves ready to go, and had to close the doors and not have volunteers, not be taking donations.”
They did hold COVID-safe bag sales, where people could drive up and get a bag of five books for $5. They had some success, but the modified events couldn’t match the genuine article. “It was something to do and it was real good for us,” Manno says. “[We] moved some books, saw some folks.”
Book donations reopened in November, and the organization was inundated right away. The group reached out to the Albemarle Square landlords, who gave them the old Northside Library space for book storage. (In the past, the sales have been held in Gordon Avenue Library basement.)
This weekend’s warehouse sale, the first of its kind, will take place at 300 Albemarle Square Shopping Center on July 9-11 from 10am-6pm each day. It will be limited to 80 shoppers at a time, and most of the books will range in price from $1-$3.
For repeat customers of the spring or fall sales, this warehouse sale will be a bit different. There will be no members’ preview night, and rare and specialist books will not be on shelves. “It’s going to be about 20 percent or less the size of our normal spring or fall sale,” Manno says. “It’s really a summer warehouse, general readers sale.”
If this weekend goes well, and COVID continues to fade into the background, the Friends of JMRL hope to have a full fall sale in early October. “We’re really hoping it can be as normal as pre-COVID as possible,” Manno says.
Book donations have been suspended until July 15 in preparation for the warehouse sale, but beginning July 15, you can drop books off on the lower level of the Gordon Avenue Library. Once the regional library system is completely up and running again, donations will be accepted at any of the libraries.
“We’re just looking forward to getting back to doing what we do,” says Manno. “See old friends, and some new friends.”
