Book Donation Guidelines
Physical Condition
- Books should be new or barely used. Please do not donate a book if it is:
- Shabby, soiled or torn in any way, defaced by writing, poorly bound or marred by missing pages or serious misprints.
- Uniquely American books such as local histories, regional cooking books and computer buying guides.
Age
- Depending on the type of book, age can be an important factor in the evaluation process:
- Atlases should not be more than five years old.
- Encyclopedias should be no more than eight (8) years old.
- Educational textbooks, especially in the fields of medicine, science, social science and the humanities should be current or no older than eight years.
Content
Please appreciate that we must show sensitivity to the values of potential recipients. In particular we are most concerned about:
- Ethnocentrism: Many older anthropology, history, geography and social science textbooks may reflect now discredited points of view that could easily perpetuate stereotypes about Africa and the Caribbean and the developing world in general.
- Religion: Please do not donate books that propagate the views of a particular religion and would be used for evangelizing. We are happy to accept books on comparative religion or on the history and philosophy of different religions.
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Magazines
We do not currently accept magazines other than National Geographic magazines published after 2000.
Packing
It would aid us if you placed books of similar genre together.
Books should be packed flat in covered boxes.
PLEASE NOTE! No book is free of cost!
If the information in it is not relevant or appropriate to our potential recipients, there is a negative cost especially in precious staff time.
Dumping useless and irrelevant books is worse than sending no books at all! This is because precious resources are wasted by recipients in retrieving them from docks, transporting, cataloging and storing them.