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CUBBERLEY
USED BOOK SALES
Saturday
April 12
10 am - 4 pm
Main Room opens at 11 am
Sunday
April 13
1 pm - 4 pm
Featured topics for
April:
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Child Psychology
Collectable Children's Books
Games and Puzzles
Hispanic America Report 1948-1964
Linguistics * Martial Arts
Railroads
Science and Technology
Weaving / Quilting / Textiles
P. G. Wodehouse Humor
World Affairs Report 1970-1990
And over 50,000 other items
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4000 Middlefield Road
Palo Alto
Northwest corner of the Cubberley Community Center
Map
More information on the sales
Donate your old books
All proceeds go to help Palo Alto libraries.
Main Book Room Sale
In our Main Room, prices are way below what used book stores charge. Paperbacks are 50 cents and up, and
hardcovers are $1 and up. Numbered tickets for the Main Room are given out
beginning at 8 am on Saturday. These reserve your place in the line that
forms before the 11 am opening. You may pick up a ticket for yourself and
for one other person.
Children's Books in K6
Room K6 in the K wing (see
map) is
entirely filled with children's books and toys. You'll find picture books,
school age fiction, award winners, non-English titles, and books for parents and
teachers, many for under $1. This room and the Bargain Room open at 10 am
on Saturday.
Bargain Books in K7
Next door in K7 is the Bargain Room, where paperbacks
are 50 cents, hardcovers are $1, and children's books are just 25 cents each.
The room also contains many LP records and 78s at $1 each. All items are
half off after 12:30 pm on Saturday and all day on Sunday. On Sunday, you
can also buy grocery bags in the Bargain Room for $5 and fill them with books.
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Library Closed Friday, April 18 |
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Palo Alto's libraries will be closed on Friday, April 18 for staff
development. Even
when the libraries are closed, you can still
search the online catalog,
submit reference desk questions,
access many online resources, and
get book recommendations. |
Non-Profit Book Giveaway |
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Non-profit organizations and schools that need free books should come to the
Bargain Room this month from 4 to 6 pm on Sunday, April 13.
Please bring grocery bags to put books into.
More information. |
Suggestions? |
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| We're always eager to hear your suggestions for ways to
improve our book sale. Please email them to us at suggestions@friendspaloaltolib.org
or mention them to a volunteer at the sale. |
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| Cart Features Excellent Bargains |
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You'll find some great bargains this month on a special cart right
as you enter the Main Room. The cart features several shelves of books
pulled from many sections and priced at healthy discounts below comparable
offerings on the Internet. You can always spot other books at our sale
that have been price-checked on the Internet as they have an "i" next to the price or include a sheet showing the comparables. |
Preview our Shelves |
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 Get a head start on this weekend's sale with our
many
shelf preview
pictures from many different
sections of our Main Room. |
Library Offers
Free Technical Books Online |
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Your Palo Alto library card now lets you instantly access
almost 1,200 books about computers and technology for free. Available
online 24/7, the collection includes many recent titles from publishers such as O’Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Peachpit Press, and Prentice-Hall.
Click here to see a full list and check out any of the books. Funded
in part through an enrichment grant from the Friends of the Palo Alto Library, this
online collection from Safari represents an incredible bargain for Palo Alto
library users, as Safari charges individuals over $250 for one year of access. |
Free Access to University Library Materials |
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Starting in 2009, you'll be able to check out millions of books
from many California and Nevada university libraries for free, thanks to the Link+
program that the Palo Alto Library will join. Unlike present interlibrary loans,
which tend to be slow and cost $7.50 per checkout, you typically receive books
through Link+ within a few days and pay nothing.
Click here to search through the amazing
collection that Link+ offers, which is way beyond that of any public library.
Back in
2004, one of our board members was using Link+ via the Mountain View Library to
research World War I and wondered why Palo Alto's library didn't offer the same
service. Various obstacles existed at the time, including technical
incompatibilities between Palo Alto's catalog system and the one used by Link+.
Those problems have since been solved and in 2007 we pledged $120,000 to help
fund and publicize a two-year Link+ pilot. Palo Alto's City Council voted
on March 17 to accept the gift and provide up to $110,000 more for the pilot.
A fast interlibrary loan system actually saves money by better sharing
materials. In 2005,
we estimated it would cost Palo Alto a billion dollars to purchase and
house a collection as large as Link+.
Link+ also allows you to
access the collections of many other public libraries, including San Francisco,
Berkeley, San Jose, and Sunnyvale. This means that if all copies of a
popular book or other item are checked out in Palo Alto, you may still be able
to get a copy quickly. If you can't wait to use Link+ until 2009, it is
available for free to all California residents at the Mountain View and many other Bay Area libraries.
See
brief Palo Alto Weekly article
and
library's detailed proposal. |
College Terrace Library Developments |
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On April 7, Palo Alto's City Council voted to reclassify the College Terrace
Library building as a Category 2 resource on the Palo Alto Historic
Inventory, thereby designating it as a "Major Building" of
regional importance. Designed by noted Bay Area architect Charles K. Sumner, the
facility was constructed in 1936 for $20,400 of WPA (Works Progress
Administration) funds. While the library portion of the building is
relatively unchanged, the other half was originally a community center but
then became a daycare facility in the mid-1970s.
The city
plans next to rehabilitate the building beginning this fall, with the library
and childcare facilities closing for one to two years.
With
the Category 2 designation and planned rehabilitation, an
additional 2,500 square feet could be added to the building. Rather than
do that, the city is likely to sell those expansion rights for use by a
developer elsewhere in
the city. In 2005, a similar transfer of development rights of 2,500
square feet for the Children's Library earned $237,500 for the city's general
fund and the city hopes to raise a similar amount from selling the College
Terrace rights. See
Palo Alto
Weekly and
Palo Alto
Daily News articles. |
Library Bond Meetings |
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In preparation for a likely November 2008 bond measure to raise
approximately $80 million for library improvements, the city is holding three
public meetings:
* Tuesday, April 29 at 7 to 8:30 pm at the Main Library,
* Wednesday, April 30 from 7 to 8:30 pm at the Mitchell Park Community Center, and
* Saturday, May 10 from 10 to 11:30 am at the Mitchell Park Community Center.
The improvements consist of replacing the existing Mitchell Park Library
and Community Center with a single 51,000 square foot building at the same site,
remodeling and somewhat enlarging the Main Library, and reconfiguring and
updating the Downtown Library. See
proposed designs. The city is also producing a nine-minute
informational video and will send two to four direct mail pieces to residents.
To address cost concerns, the city has sought input from local construction experts and expects to hear their report at a City Council study session on May
5 at 6 pm at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue. The city also plans to assess voter support for the bond measure via
a poll and then review the results at the June 23 City Council meeting. |
Free
Class on Genealogy Resources |
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There's still time to sign up for the May 14 class on how to use
the library's many genealogy resources. The class will
be held from 10:30 am to noon at the Main Library, 1213 Newell Road and you can
reserve a spot
online. |
Someone in Finland: Pay Up! |
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It's every library user's nightmare: you forget to return a book
and the fines mount. But what if you want to return a book more than 100
years overdue, as recently happened at a library in Vantaa, a city in south
Finland near Helsinki? The 1902 bound volume contained an old library note
listing overdue fines at 10 pennies a week. No payment was included and
the book was apparently checked out at a different library, since the branch it was returned to didn't exist a hundred years ago. Not surprisingly,
the library does not know yet who is responsible. See
Reuters story. |
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