Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Has anyone here ever donated any Lizzie books to their local library?

I am considering doing so, because the last time I checked, my local library only had 3 books on lizzie, they were;

1 Sullivan's Goodbye Lizzie Borden.

2 Spiering's Lizzie.

3 and upstairs in the Adult Fiction Section, Hunter's Lizzie.

I want to donate some books with Independant looks at the case as well as some that have Lizzie Innocent, because most of the books out there have lizzie guilty.

I am considering for Independant books; William's Casebook, Mastertons's Lizzie Didn't Do It, and Geary's comic book.

For Lizzie Innocent books; Radin's The Untold Story and Muriel's The Hands Of Time.

I am curious which books others here would donate to their Libraries if they were to do so. I would not expect anyone to donate Rebello, as I would not donate mine. I don't know if I would want to donate a Sourcebook or Reference book, probably only those who want to take an in depth look at the case would be interested in them. Also I would not donate any book that I have only one copy of.

There are several introductory type books that I did not mention. I only mentioned the in depth books. Also I never mentioned any books that I have not read yet such as Lizzie Borden took An Axe, Or Did She? A Rhetorical Inquiry.

Every library has different rules about what they will accept and not accept. At my old library in Orlando, all donations were given to the Friends of the Library to sell to raise money. No books donated went on the shelves.

So you should ask first, or your books may end up in your own hands again!

Another better choice would be to endow a book collection of Lizzie titles. That way they have to spend the money on that subject matter. Plus they put a bookplate in the book with your name on it. Endowments can be just a small donation even. Libraries don't pay full price for books, as you probably already know.

I was going to ask them if they would put the books on the shelve before I gave them any of them. However I did not think about the possibility of them selling the books off.

To endow you mean if I donate the money with the titles then they have to use the money to buy those titles? I guess there might be no guarantee about the library not selling the books later, but that might be the case when any book gets worn out.

Libraries accept endowments, but they are almost always money. People can bequeath their money to libraries and earmark it for a specific collection or subject matter.

People can donate money as an endowment as a tribute to a loved one, living or dead.

And people can endow a library for a specific reason, such as the purchase of rare books, periodicals, or subject matter.

The Orange County Library System in Orlando does this. They put a special bookplate in each book purchased with the endowment person's name in it or the name of the person the endowment was made for.

Libraries want new books. Not used ones. The used ones they sell to raise money to buy more new books. Expect for very expensive special collections, that is the way it is. They would rather take the cash and do the acquisitions.

Any book that comes into the system must be catalogued, wrapped, tagged, and shelved. The cataloguing puts the title in the system so it can be found again when doing subject, title, keyword, LC number searches, etc.

It costs a lot of money to add a book to a library collection, in both man hours and materials.

Does this help?

That helps a great deal, Thanks. Now I know what to check out before doing this.