HUB gets all booked up for annual benefit sale

From the outside, the building at 118 N. Sparks St. looks like a regular warehouse.

However, inside, walls of tomato boxes towered overhead Tuesday, filled with books about every imaginable topic, including psychology, religion and history.

Among the maze of boxes, volunteers who have been preparing since July frantically rushed to sort, price and box the books in time for the 37th annual American Association of University Women used book sale.

Book lovers might want to get there early tomorrow, since the sale tends to attract a large crowd on opening day.

"The lines form early in the morning, before the HUB is even open," said Louise Tukey, chairwoman of the sale.

This year, the sale will include more than 100,000 books, including 40,000 paperbacks and 8,000 children's books, Tukey said.

Prices of books vary anywhere from 40 cents to $10 or more, she said.

For the musically inclined, the sale will also offer sheet music, compact discs and cassette tapes, in addition to about 4,000 phonograph records, organized into rock/pop, classics, children's and Christmas categories.

A new addition to the sale this year is a selection of wall maps that customers might recognize as the type of maps elementary school teachers use. The maps will sell for $1 to $10 each.

Four donation boxes -- a key element in the preparation -- sit on the curb outside the warehouse. All year, community members drop off used books to be sold in the sale.

After two local high school students empty the donation boxes, the books are sorted into 23 different categories, from "A" for art to "T" for travel, Tukey said.

From there, a book moves to the pricers, who evaluate the selling price according to its age, condition and popularity. The pricers usually handle the same categories of books every year, "so they become experts in that category," Tukey said.

One such expert is Jean Pellegrin, who is a librarian and has been volunteering with AAUW for about 25 years. A long time book-lover, she began volunteering when AAUW members asked her to help out with the sale.

"I tend to gravitate toward books," she said.

Pellegrin is an expert on pricing all the social science books and books that come in sets, such as encyclopedias.

"All year long we're getting books. It never quits," she said, surrounded by books about abnormal psychology and human development.

Pellegrin said she learned to price the books from doing it over and over again every year.

The warehouse has book-pricing guides on hand to assist new volunteers or help with rarer books, she said.

"You learn by doing it," she said.

In instances where a volunteer consults the pricing guide and still doesn't know how much the book should cost, Tukey said, she will consult the Rare Books Room in Pattee for more information.

Karin Constant, another book pricer, said her job can include a lot of guesswork, but measures are taken so customers don't necessarily have to pay a lot for books that volunteers accidentally overprice.

"We want to get rid of things, and also in case they overprice things -- people can buy them cheaper later," she said.

As with every year, book dealers from around the nation will be attending the sale. Tukey said she has received calls from dealers in Maine, Florida, Iowa and Indiana.

"They're looking for books to sell to customers, often on consignment," she said. "But mostly, they're looking for classics and special books."

And there are special books to be found in those tomato boxes.

One book, titled The Grapes of New York, will be selling for $150 because of its rarity.

"It's a very rare book with gorgeous plates," Tukey said.

Dealers are interested in the sale because of its size, and also because it is termed a "clean sale," she said.

" 'Clean sale' means we don't carry any junk," she said, adding that highlighted or marked books and books with missing covers will not be included in the sale.

The sale has come a long way since it began in 1962, when AAUW raised $179 with a couple of tables of books, Tukey said. Last year, the sale included 183 tables and raised more than $87,000, and this year, the volunteers hope to raise even more money.

But the focus Tuesday was on preparation.

The volunteers continued sorting, pricing and boxing amid the sea of books, while Constant expressed the thought that was on everyone's minds.

"OK, there's another box ready," she mumbled under her breath, then went on to the next pile.