The Friends Of The UCSB Library will host their first annual book sale today to raise funds for Davidson Library’s special collections.
From 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the Friends, a volunteer group in support of the library, will be holding a sale on the first floor of the Davidson Library in the 24-hour study room, located directly to the left of the library’s main entrance. Aubrey Spilde, the library’s assistant development director, said the sale will be open to all comers and most books will be priced from 50 cents to $3. Spilde said she hopes the sale’s location will increase student turnout at the sale.
“There will be more public traffic passing by the sale this year. Usually the only people who come are those who already know about it,” Spilde said. “This way people might just be passing by and say, ‘Oh, a book sale.’ ”
Davidson librarian Sarah Pritchard said the money raised from the books sold does not go directly to the library, but is instead collected by the Friends, who then allocate the funds to special library purchases.
“The money mostly goes to special collections which we would not have any other way to purchase, and it helps us to buy distinctive books, manuscripts and things that are not just regular books, particularly rare books,” she said.
Pritchard said the sale would help students in the long run.
“The money goes to the library to buy more books, which benefits the students themselves,” Pritchard said.
Pritchard said the variety of books as well as the low prices might surprise shoppers.
“There will be all kinds of neat books at inexpensive prices and you never know what you will find there,” she said.
The books sold at the sale are not books from the library collections, Pritchard said, but are donations the library itself could not use.
“The selection at the sales are sometimes very random,” she said. “It is a real hodgepodge of books.”
Davidson Library Head of Special Collections David Tambo said he hopes to increase the library’s stock of rare books with the money from the sale.
“The library staff [is] looking for a variety of things for the library, some of which will be bought with the money from the book sale,” Tambo said. “Primarily we are looking to add to our manuscript collections and buy more rare books.”
Pritchard said the Friends were officially founded in 1967 and is the oldest club of its type on campus.
“The members are usually the kinds of people who are already involved in the university and want to support the library,” Pritchard said.
Pritchard said the Friends typically donates $20,000 a year to the library, which is spent on rare materials for the library’s special collections. The money is donated in three installments and is transferred to the library’s curators, who either save it up for big purchases or spend it immediately.
The Friends website states that the organization helps fund the purchase of items that supplement and strengthen existing collections such as the American Religions Collection, the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions collections and the Performing Arts Collection.
