The recent Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Spring Book Sale hit record-high sales. A total of $129,940.14 was raised during the seven-day event Springfield.
That beat the old record set in the fall of 2012 by more than $4000.
The Friends started the sale with nearly five full tractor-trailer loads of books, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, vinyl records, games and puzzles – all donated over the past year by individuals and weeded out by the library system.
New this year was a collection of about 15,000 baseball cards that the Friends packaged in about a dozen boxes.
Friends of the Library president and sale chair Jim Moore says those were gone by 11 am the day the sale opened to the public.
The Friends donated most of the leftover items to several nonprofit organizations, according to a Springfield-Greene County Library District news release.
Proceeds from the sales help fund library concerts, the Summer Reading Program, special lecture series, author visits, One Read and Big Read programs and equipment or updates in the 10 library branches. The Friends funded the Mobile Library that makes weekly visits to more than 20 neighborhoods and schools. The Friends also pledged $300,000 toward the ongoing capital campaign, ReNew Brentwood, to renovate the Brentwood Branch Library.