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We appreciate the generosity of those who wish to donate used materials and encourage the  donation of these materials to a community agency.  The Hamilton Public Library no longer accepts, nor uses, donated materials because of the associated costs of adding them to the collection or of disposing of them.

There are, however, a number of organizations within our community that do accept materials.  See:

Donating Materials in Our Community

Background Information

We appreciate offers  to donate books to the Hamilton Public Library. However, the Hamilton Public Library does not generally accept donated books as they put a strain on the system and actually end up costing us more to include in our collections.

Donations for our collections

It costs us more than $10 to add a donated book to our collections. This includes the costs of: creating an electronic record so that an item can be placed in the catalogue; placing a protective cover on the item; and having security tags installed. Conversely, the library does not incur such costs when we purchase new material. Vendors are able to process so many copies of a new title at one time that these costs are included in the price we pay.Most donated items are not appropriate for our collections, leaving the library to absorb the costs of sorting and then disposing via recycling and recycling of these materials is increasingly costly.

Donations for us to sell

Some library customers like to donate books they have read to the library so these books can be sold .  In the past year alone our activity has increased by 20%, and the library system has become  far too stretched to continue to offer such a service. The cost incurred by the Library for handling and storing these donations for a book sale  outweighs the value of the donation. In order to continue providing good service, we have to focus on our core mandate and free up valuable staff time for that.

Which donations does the library accept?

The Hamilton Public Library has a mandate to collect and preserve valuable material that pertains to Hamilton’s past and its culture. We accept items such as photographic collections from professional photographers, nineteenth century scrap books that contain material on Hamilton’s history, etc. Valuable material on Hamilton’s past is evaluated by staff in our Hamilton Local History Archives Department before being accepted.