When items are a donation I make sure to give the whole "if we don't put it in our collection is it alright if we put it in the bookvsale?" but was thrown by him coming in in person (I hadn't met him before) with his own book and forgot to say that. On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 10:46 AM Michelle Parker < northadamslibrarian2@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi All,
What do you do with books local authors drop off that may be of questionable quality? There's a local author who has dropped off their book a couple times to put in our collection, but it looks very poorly put together and I read a little and it seems like there was no editor.
I looked over our Collection Development Policy and one of the criteria is "effectiveness of the format in conveying information" (which feels like it falls short on). They had dropped off two copies last time that just went in our book sale, but they came in again and dropped off another and I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to be like: "sorry, your book is poorly formatted and doesn't meet our collection development criteria"...
Any suggestions on how to let them down gently?
Thank you for your help!
Michelle Parker Librarian North Adams Community Memorial Library 517-287-4426 Library Website <https://www.northadamscml.michlibrary.org/> Library Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/NorthAdamsCommunityMemorialLibrary> [image: Logo]
-- Michelle Parker Librarian North Adams Community Memorial Library 517-287-4426 Library Website <https://www.northadamscml.michlibrary.org/> Library Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/NorthAdamsCommunityMemorialLibrary> [image: Logo]