Library Book Sale 2011

I volunteered for the Library Book Sale on 24th July 2011. Not for the actual event but the pre-selection for one of the charity groups - SINDA.

A few of us came together as a group and spent the morning choosing books and 'grabbing' as fast as we can. Half were selectors, the other half were packers.

All in all, it was a tiring morning but a very happy one working and volunteering with friends.

Little introduction:

The Charity Book Donation is a precursor to the NLB's highly popular annual Library Book Sale. Held on 23 and 24 July 2011 at the Singapore Expo Hall 4A, the Library Book Sale this year will offer a wide collection of more than 355,000 used books and magazines in the four official languages.

Starting from $1.00, these items are categorised under 'Adults', 'Young People' and 'Children' collections. Under each group, they are sub-divided into 'Fiction' and 'Non-Fiction'. Adult English non-fiction books will be sub-categorised under eight specific categories namely, Arts, Business, Cookery, Family, Health & Gardening, Pets & Animals, Recreation, and Travel Guides and a General category. Popular magazines such as Vogue, Women's Weekly, and parenting magazine Ma Ma Bao Bei among other titles will be on sale.

The Library Book Sale is open to all members of the public. There is no limit on the number of items that can be purchased. Items will be replenished at regular intervals over the two days of the event.

Library Book Sale details :

Date : 23 – 24 July 2011

Time : 9.30am – 8.00pm

Location : Singapore Expo Hall 4A








Tome Keeper ♥

Typical Mass Borrowing Outreach

This particular outreach was at Poi Ching School in July. The teacher had scheduled a two-days Mass Borrowing session for all levels (P1-P6).

So I would first notify the vendor staff two weeks in advance so they would have time to select and pack the books into boxes (all labelled accordingly; J/JS/JP - Fic/NFic). At the same time, I would need to arrange for transport as well to bring the boxes to-and-fro.

We would discuss beforehand the logistics required. As Poi Ching had done mass borrowing with us before, there wasn't a need to recce the area. For first-timers, usually the librarian would go down personally to choose the best spot (wide area for tables, lan point etc).

This Mass Borrowing session started at 8.30am so we (myself and two other Library Officers) were there at 8am for set-up. We opened the boxes and displayed some books in order for the students to browse.



While some did the unpacking, the other would set-up the Outreach laptops, along with the scanner and dongles to connect to the Internet. We also brought along a portable printer to print the loan receipt.



Let the browsing/borrowing begin!




The students were a delightful bunch! We had a double loan promotion going on and they were so excited, grabbing books left and right. Avid readers :)

Some who had borrowed their books sat down immediately to read. While others who could not borrow (had fines, didn't bring card etc) also picked up a book and read on the spot.

See the row of readers? Awesome picture, isn't it?


We'll have to remind the students repeatedly NOT to return the books at the school library. But it's inevitable to receive such cases. All in all, it was a good and fruitful outreach.

We had almost 80% of the books borrowed (brought 2000).

Tome Keeper ♥