The basement of Beaumont’s downtown library resembles a cityscape with roads between tower blocks. Except, these cardboard skyscrapers are, in fact, rows upon rows of used books, waiting to find a good home.
The Friends of the Beaumont Public Library is hosting a “Sack of Books” sale, April 5-6, at the downtown library. FoL members can start shopping, April 5, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Membership costs $10 for an individual and $20 for a family and may be purchased at the door. General admission is 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., April 6.
Patrons may purchase a paper grocery sack for $2 and fill it with as many books as they can. There is no limit to the number of bags that may be bought. H-E-B donated 750 bags for the event. Elaine Wikstrom, Friends of the Library president, said the organization receives books from donations and surplus library books.
“We had a local church donate their whole library because they had no use for it anymore, so it’s things like that how we get books for the sale,” Wikstrom said. “When we get donations, we’ll go through them and sometimes find family books or yearbooks. With these, we try our best to track down the family or person to give this back to them.”
Visitors will be able to browse through every type of genre, from children’s books to cookbooks, from fiction to non-fiction. The books are sorted by genre.
“We’ve been working on sorting and putting the books in boxes since January, and we’re all just volunteers,” Wikstrom said. “You can see our age, so it wasn’t easy, but we’ve managed to do all this.”
Paul Eddy, director for the Beaumont Public Library System, said he grew up with libraries which led to a master’s degree in library sciences.
“My Dad was a librarian and being around him made me want to do the same,” Eddy said. “I have been a librarian since 1994.”
Eddy has worked in the Beaumont library system for 15 years. At the last sale, in November 2022, Eddy said around 100 people were in line when the doors opened, and 800 to 1,000 attended throughout the whole day.
“In total, we were able to sell over 1,000 bags,” he said.
Eddy estimates that the sale will feature between 3,000 and 5,000 books. There will also be a selection of other media, including vinyl records, CDs and cassette tapes.
The Beaumont downtown library is located at 801 Pearl Street.