What happens to your book after you donate it?

Your donations help fill our Pop-Up Library, which gives away books all around the community.

When you place a book or two in our donations box—thank you, by the way—do you ever wonder what happens to it?

Where does it go? Will anyone ever read your book again?

The answer is your book could go to a lot of different places; but, wherever it goes, that book is helping someone.

We give a lot of donated books away. We firmly believe everyone should have access to books. If that means giving away a book that we might have sold at a book sale, we’re fine with that.

We’ve given away hundreds of books during My Community Monday where we donate books to local nonprofits, including schools, churches, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Deepwood, Lake Metropolitan Housing Authority, Hannah’s Home, Boy and Girl Scouts, and more.

The books you donate help fill the Little Free Libraries in parks, restaurants and businesses all over the city. We also give them away at city pools and at Mentor Headlands Beach so people never lack for a good summer read.

Your donations also fill the Pop-Up Library that gives away books at CityFest, Beachfest, schools and more.

And many of the donations we receive are sold during the Friends of the Mentor Public Library book sales at our Read House. In turn, that money goes to support library events and programming. The money that pays for an author talk or buys supplies for children’s programs often begins with the book you donate.

Furthermore, thanks to donations from people like you, we’ve given away more than 10,000 books this year.

And that doesn’t happen without your donations, so thank you! Thank you for your support, your donations, and for making us your community library.

Diane Frangos picks donations from the shelves of our Read House for the Girl Scouts.

My Community Monday gets books to those who need it

Diane Frangos picks donations from the shelves of our Read House for the Girl Scouts.

Mentor Public Library receives more book donations than we could ever use—more than we could fit on our shelves, even more than could be sold during the Friends of the Mentor Public Library's book sales.

Instead of letting good books go to waste, we wanted to make them available to people who could use them; so we invited local nonprofits—Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Broadmoor, Hannah's Home, St. John Vianney, Lake-Geauga Recovery Center and more— to visit our Read House on Monday, Jan. 19, and pick out books they thought their members, clients, patrons or parishioners would enjoy.

We call it My Community Monday, and we hope it put books in the hands of a lot of people—kids, teens and adults—who will dig them.

If you work for a local nonprofit and want to come to our next My Community Monday on Feb. 9, email our Community Outreach Coordinator Jason Lea.

Finally, we need to thank everyone who donates books to Mentor Public Library! We appreciate your generosity. You're helping a lot of organizations that make Lake County a better place to live!

Gail Keegan of Lake-Geauga Recovery Centers looks for books for their clients and children at Lake and Oak House.