The debate over responsibility for the quality of donations to community libraries continues. This time, Daniele Carneiro, who started the conversation, gives his opinion again.
- To fully understand, read Community Library is Not Garbage first and then No Garbage is Garbage
Here’s what she, Daniele Carneiro, writes:
alessandro
This opinion served to strengthen some opinions I have about free libraries with voluntary initiative, and to make a deep reflection on several topics raised there.
I believe people should be educated about giving. That donation is not garbage, nor is it simply getting rid of something that bothers you. We must guide more and more so that people make conscious donations, that they are aware of what they are donating, not to free up space in the closet and garage, but to know that they are doing good to another person. That your donation will be perpetuated through the use of someone else. Donation needs to be disassociated from the idea of “old, useless thing”, I will keep hitting that key from now on.
I have my reservations about this “receiving all donations with a smile on my face” story. It is necessary to have criteria and guidance to those who donate. If most of those who donate were a little more careful and aware of the objects they donate, there wouldn’t be so much nonsense in the donations made to the flood homeless in Teresópolis and Nova Friburgo where people donated party dresses, high heels, fur coats , expired food, salt, for needy people in a state of emergency, who needed clothes to wear at that moment and food to be served immediately, as we have already discussed here on the Books pageand others. I raised this issue on my Facebook and many people reported nonsense about donations, people who donate torn clothes, missing button, zipper. It’s the same with books. We think that the obvious doesn’t need to be explained and that everyone has discernment when it comes to donating, but that’s not how it works.
As I got to know more closely the people who are now the readers who use the Sítio Vanessa Community Library, I became even more careful, even more selective in relation to the books they will have in their hands. In the first donations, we took the books that we thought would be interesting to have in a library deer in the Serra do Mar. After readers started telling us what they wanted to read, I started looking for these books.
I would like to make it very clear that the Sítio Vanessa Community Library is managed by people who understand books. Books that have an author that we are not aware of are researched before sending them to Morretes. I read most children’s books to find out if they are in line with the education we would like to give our children. Books are analyzed very closely, not thrown away summarily. So we are also increasing our repertoire in relation to literary culture. Our readers grow and we grow together. If they don’t fit the reading pattern of readers of Bíblio do Sítio, we do exchange programs, exchange it at a friend of ours in São José dos Pinhais, for books and magazines that our readers have asked for.
Another thing: We will never put anyone in a lighthouse to make a toll. It ‘s that writer’s library management option , but it’s not our case. In fact, it goes against everything we believe, in short, each one goes according to his will.
A free and/or community library will work according to its founders, and the task we set out to do is to take books to the residents and promote events for the children of rural schools in Estrada do Anhaia, according to the project that we created (I and Juliano Rocha) with Edemilson Pereira (owner of Sítio Vanessa). There is no manual to manage a free or community library, each one will act as it is correct, necessary and mainly in accordance with the principles of the place where it is installed. And our library is free, based on the principles of the Honey Pot Library. An initiative of three people that gained a lot of sympathy on social networks, without having to appeal to pity. We don’t see books as “kilos” but as volumes that are carefully thought out whether they are for the library or not. When they don’t serve, we exchange with other libraries. We took a box of books that were not related to the profile of the readers of the Biblioteca do Sítio to the Mini Biblioteca de Curitiba. And you can be sure they were books that will last a long time, as they were in excellent condition, from a collection received from a teacher. I would never give away a book that is all torn apart, scratched, and not able to be used by anyone else. Put it in recycling. And I wouldn’t give the Mini Library administrators the task of deciding whether or not it’s garbage. for they were in excellent condition, from a collection received from a teacher. I would never give away a book that is all torn apart, scratched, and not able to be used by anyone else. Put it in recycling. And I wouldn’t give the Mini Library administrators the task of deciding whether or not it’s garbage. for they were in excellent condition, from a collection received from a teacher. I would never give away a book that is all torn apart, scratched, and not able to be used by anyone else. Put it in recycling. And I wouldn’t give the Mini Library administrators the task of deciding whether or not it’s garbage.
Books for us are not money. We do not profit from the library, nor do we need or need government help at any time, so these ideas are discarded.
I’ll make it very clear here: Our work niche is with books, which are selected, cleaned, pasted, restored, stamped and taken with care for readers. Our task is not recycling. Making the greatest number of people in the Anhaia region have books in their hands to read is our task. We have already won several supporters of our initiative, we have already received donations of brand new books, which had not even been touched, straight from the shelves of the donors themselves. Yes, we like new books, we have nothing against them, mainly because they are going into the hands of people just starting out in the book world now. Just as we have nothing against old books, with the marks of time, as long as they are still in use condition and that they will still carry stories to many readers for many years to come.bookcase , and so we receive many books, directly from collections and bookcases, new and old.
And we will continue to guide our friends, or friends of friends, readers, friendly people to our initiative and future interested in donating books, so that they do not donate torn, scratched, outdated, missing page, eaten by dogs, by moths, because they they will go straight into the hands of new readers, and not into recycling, because that is not our work focus.
I fully believe in the reading cycle and that the books we need will always come to us. We received a donation from our former professor of environmental journalism, who has collected a collection of books over 25 years in the profession. They were books about preservation, the environment and nature that fit perfectly with the Library located in the Serra do Mar. And that’s just to name one of the many donations we’ve received.
Guiding people to what is right and wrong when donating, especially if those who will receive this donation do not deal with recycling, seems to me the right thing to do. In fact, this orientation is urgent and necessary.
Alessandro, if you can, I would like to ask you to publish my other text on donation. I believe it would be very useful, since the discussion was present.