The Stanislaus County Library is a public library system consisting of a central library and twelve smaller branches.  The library collects carefully-chosen materials to encourage lifelong learning and the love of reading, creating a diverse collection that includes all points of view.  Gift materials must meet the same criteria for selection as purchased materials.  Our emphasis is on acquiring current materials of wide-ranging interest to the general public.   Except in the case of local material, we do not maintain historical collections.

Gifts of books:
Because of the large amount of labor required to evaluate older materials, the library accepts gifts of books with the intent of only keeping those that are no more than two years old and in excellent condition.  Boxes of older books left at libraries are sold through our library book sale shelves.  We refer people with older books to other places that may want them.  New paperbacks accepted may be circulated as uncataloged materials or "quick linked" at the library accepting the donation.   This is a popular service for customers who purchase and read large quantities of paperback series and wish to share them.

Gifts of videos, books-on-tape, and books-on-CD:
Due to the difficulties in evaluating the condition of the donation, these must be previewed before being placed in the collection.  Because of the amount of staff time this requires, we generally accept only new items.

Gifts of magazines:
We are unable to use gifts of back issues of magazines.  We keep back issues on microfilm because of space limitations and we subscribe to an online magazine database that offers full text of many publications.

All materials donated to the Stanislaus County Library become the property of the library.

October 1, 2001