Saturday
July 12
10 am - 4 pm
Main Room opens at 11 am

Sunday
July 13
1 pm - 4 pm

Featured topics for July:

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.

High heat and lack of air conditioning closed Palo Alto's Main, Mitchell Park, and College Terrace libraries mid-afternoon yesterday (July 8).  Those libraries will reopen today at regular hours, but anticipated higher temperatures over the next two days means more closures are possible.  We recommend visiting the libraries early in the day or using the air-conditioned Downtown and Children's branches.

Non-profit organizations and schools that need free books should come to the Bargain Room this month from 4 to 6 pm on Sunday, July 13.  Please bring grocery bags to put books into.  More information.

Some of the most remarkable books at our monthly booksale look plain on the outside, but have marvelous illustrations, maps, typography, and even decorative papers within.  It's hard during a sale to open these and see what's inside, so we've added some photos of the interiors of interesting books to our regular shelf preview pictures.  We hope you enjoy leisurely looking through these exciting offerings before the sale.
 
The example on the left is from the An Illustrated History of Southern California, printed in the 1890s by the Lewis Publishing Company, which features wonderful photographs of long-ago buildings.  See more of the actual pages.  You'll find this book in our Old Books section in the northeast corner of the Main Room.
 
Perrault's Fairy Tales is filled with wonderful color illustrations such as this one of Cinderella fleeing the ball. See more pages from this book, which sells for just $10 and is located on the red cart just by the entrance to the Main Room.

 
Preview Other Shelves

See all the shelf preview pictures of our Main room this month, giving you an advance peek at some of the tens of thousands of interesting books available at this weekend's sale.

One especially nice donation we received recently are about 30 fiction and non-fiction Franklin Library signed editions (see the pictures), which are very popular with collectors.  These volumes are located on the Specials shelves across from the cashiers in the Main Room and sell for $25 to $30 each.

Palo Alto's City Council voted Monday night to proceed with plans to ask voters for approximately $75 million on the November ballot to improve three Palo Alto libraries.  As part of that effort, the Council opted to use the highest energy efficiency standards for the proposed new Mitchell Park Library and Community Center and to exclude $1.5 million for earlier project costs from the bond measure.
 
A poll in June found that 65% of 600 likely Palo Alto voters supported the proposed measure after hearing both pro and con arguments.  This falls slightly short of the required 2/3 supermajority and the polling firm of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates cautions that support tends to drift downward as an election nears.  However, they found support was slightly higher than in 2007, when the project was estimated to cost just $45 million and the economy was stronger.  The poll's margin of error is +/- 4%.
 
A bond measure in November 2002 to replace the Mitchell Park Library and Community Center and rebuild the Children's Library narrowly failed to reach the 2/3 level with 61.5% voting yes.

The recent poll showed considerable support for Palo Alto's five libraries.  58% of those polled had visited the Main Library in the last year, while 53% had used Mitchell Park, 25% Downtown, 24% Children's, and 13% College Terrace.  In fact, the polling found that 10% of the electorate would switch from voting yes to no in November if the Downtown Library improvements were excluded, even though this would save $4 million.
 
Among 24 possible improvements for the library system, the top choice was that all buildings be earthquake-safe, with 78% of likely voters rating this as extremely or very important.  Providing safe places for children, expansion of the collection, facilities for homework help, and accessibility for disabled persons ranked next.  The least popular improvements (as measured by the percentage rating these as extremely or very important) were building a new Mitchell Park Library and Community Center and spaces for community meetings, with only 29% strongly in favor of the latter.
 
City staff will work on the official language for the bond measure in the next weeks for the council to approve by August and a large voter education effort is already underway.  See the poll results, recent articles about the council decision (Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Daily News), the city's project website, our quick views of the proposed designs, and previous coverage on our news pages.

The Palo Alto Library is replacing many traditional reference materials with free online resources, which generally are available instantaneously 24/7 from home, office, and classroom, consume no valuable library space, don't require separate copies for each branch, and can be updated as needed.  The Friends of the Palo Alto Library has given over $100,000 in recent years to increase the library's online resources, thanks in part to a Cable Co-op Legacy Grant.
 
One such new resource is the LearningExpress Library, which offers beginning, intermediate, and often advanced online instruction for the following popular software programs:
 
   Adobe Acrobat 6.0
   Internet Explorer
   Microsoft Access 2003 and 2007
   Microsoft Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007
   Microsoft Outlook 98, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007
   Microsoft PowerPoint 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007
   Microsoft Word 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007
   Windows Vista
 
If you enjoy listening to audio books, the NetLibrary eAudio collection has over 3,000 downloadable titles for your PC and MP3 (but not iPod or Zune) players.  That's one title a day for 12 years of commuting!  The audio books topics include popular fiction and non-fiction, business, government and politics, mystery and suspense, romance, and even foreign language instruction, ranging from Albanian to Vietnamese.
 
The TellMeMore online resource is another way to learn or practice languages.  It provides intensive instruction in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish and actually can help you improve your pronunciation by listening to you through a microphone.
 
Many other online resources are available from the Palo Alto Library, including Nolo Press self-help books, back issues of thousands of magazines and newspapers, homework assistance, local history, and statistical databases.  See the comprehensive list.