Book Donation Program

LYRASIS/Bridge to Asia Book Donation Programs

LYRASIS and Bridge to Asia are making the opportunity of donating books to a worthy cause more easily available to LYRASIS member libraries under two types of programs. Both programs offer member libraries the following benefits:

• Your donation will benefit teachers and students and enable them to build better futures for themselves and their countries.
• Your books and journals are guaranteed to go to deserving recipients overseas. None are sold anywhere for any reason.
• You can offer retiring professors at your institution an option for donating their book and journal collections to a worthy cause.

Bridge to Asia provides educational institutions with books, journals, monographs, databases, and other educational materials that are essential for teaching and research but too costly for most schools or scholars to afford. Its work is made possible through the generosity and good will of several thousand individual and institutional donors who have given nearly 10 million books over 20 years, including more than half of the foreign academic materials acquired by China's universities in that time. The Follett Higher Education Group in Chicago generously provides a staging area for shipping overseas. Other staging areas are in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and we hope to find one for the eastern United States in the future.

Retiring Professors' Book Donation Program

Libraries are often approached by professors who are ready to retire and would like to donate their carefully chosen personal book and journal collections to their institutional library. It is rare that a library can accept such valuable, subject-specific collections, often due to space issues. LYRASIS member libraries can now refer such inquiries to our book donation program. We will make every effort to keep these collections as intact as possible. Although individuals will be responsible for packing and shipping their collections to Chicago, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, they may use the economical library mail rate or a discounted motor freight rate, and the value of the books is deductible along with any out-of-pocket expenses for packing and shipping them.

Library Book and Journal Donation Program

Libraries planning to discard or permanently store paper versions of journal runs, monographs, databases and indexes (e.g., Chemical Abstracts), catalogs (e.g., National Union Catalog), and similar materials may wish instead to donate them to our program. If your library has a large number of such materials (ca. 750 book cartons), Bridge to Asia will deliver a land-sea container to your location to collect them. Libraries will be responsible for packing the materials and loading the container, but Bridge to Asia will manage costs and logistics from that point on.

To learn more about this worthwhile program please contact the Bridge to Asia.