SUMMARY: Donating Book s Overseas

A while back, I asked whether anyone had experience donating books overseas.
It has taken a while, but I have collected the responses here, as many of
you expressed an interest in the topic. The website I initially referred to,
which has been posted to this list before, is:
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/hsl/donationprograms.html
<http://ublib.buffalo.edu/hsl/donationprograms.html>  -- this is a site
which lists donation programs by recipient country. 

I am still weeding, and am looking into GH Arrow at this point. Being a
solo, it would so much easier for someone to cart everything away for me and
also offer me a credit in exchange which I can use for much-needed
gap-filling in my print subscriptions. My initial intention was to donate
the books overseas through our Global Ministries within my healthcare
organization. Unfortunately, there was no interest in English
medical/nursing books (!). I also might try the USPS Media Rate (out of my
budget) to ship to a US-based organization who would "take it from there".

Here are the responses:

1> Contact Jay Butler at GH Arrow:  1-800-775-2776.  gharrow@...
<mailto:gharrow@...> 

He is pleasant to deal with and in addition to packing all and carting it
away, he can give you "credit" towards any missing issues you may need to
fill in your own collection.  We send him a wish list every year or two.

2> We excluded books over 12 years old and I had a physician who has
experience providing pro bono service review items I was not sure would be
useful.  His comment was that many of the older items especially surgical
procedures were very valuable.  Many countries do not have the latest
laparoscopic equipment but the older approaches are still quite successful.
Sometimes sending the latest approaches is not as useful if they do not have
both the equipment, support staff, and training needed to use this
equipment.  

3>At the call of a med librarian in Nevada, I shipped 300 lbs of medical
books (only slightly out of date) to medical librarians in Iraq, as
mentioned in the Michael Strutin article in Feb 2005 issue of American
Libraries. However, I knew I couldn't afford it (one person library), so I
contacted the medical unit of the local army base, and they shipped the
books on military transport to Iraq. This is a "feel good" story for
everyone and won much press -- however, I have no idea whether my books are
actually being used.

4> We recently weeded our collection and also received donations from other
nearby hospitals. We donated over 46 boxes of books (a ton 1/2) to a
hospital in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

One of the hospital dietitians was retiring and had planned a trip to China
and then to Mongolia.  A consular official in Mongolia informed the
dietitian that this hospital had English reading physicians but no medical
books... The books were picked up by truck and shipped in one of those
containerized cargo boxes.  Our dietitian contacted Swanson Family
Foundation and they paid for the shipping. (This Foundation has some
connection with Mongolia).

My advice would be to try and find a large corporation that regularly ships
to the location you want to send your donated books to.  The other
organizations have so many restrictions on what they will take and where
they will send materials and many want the sending library to pay for
shipping.  Try to find a corporation who will do this for you. It good for
the recipients, It's good PR for the corporation, and its a wonderful thing
for libraries to share these valuable resources with those who cannot afford
them.

5> We sent old box years ago to an organization that sent books to Bosnia
after the war there. We once sent journals to India privately. We searched
around for the cheapest shipping rate and found out that the post office has
something called the M-rate. These are big bags where you just throw your
things into. In 1999 they charged .79/lb with a maximum of 66.1. lbs per
bag. The problem was that we had to drive to the post office ourselves to
sent them. 

6> Last year we sent over 30 boxes of books to AmeriCares, to be distributed
in Iraq or Afghanistan or Liberia. Our administration covered the cost of
the shipment to AmeriCares in CT, and I believe it was $200-$300.00. I think
it was via Yellow Transportation at that time. AmeriCares covered the
shipping abroad. Then we shipped an overhead projector, books and school
supplies to Tanzania through the Postal Service (economy and it took about 4
months to get to them!) I believe that cost around $130.00, and our
administration paid for it. We just shipped 6 or so "M-bags" of books to our
sister library in Tanzania, and we could just use the postal meter at the
hospital to mark the tags. The "M-bags", used specifically for books through
the Post Office cost $11.00 up to 11 pounds, then $1.00 per pound after
that. And we also shipped about 30 boxes to the American Heart Association
(donations of the journal Circulation so they could digitize them). They
paid for the shipping, and the cost was about $320.00. We sent them Roadway
Express.

What I learned through these shipments is that it's not easy to find someone
who will ship for free. At least it wasn't for me. I investigated different
"routes" and found it easier to ask Administration for their support.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO REPLIED!

Rita

Rita Haydar, M.S., M.L.S.

Manager, Medical Library

St. Mary Medical Center

1201 Langhorne-Newtown Road

Langhorne, PA 19047

Tel. 215-710-2012

Fax 215-710-4638

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