Donate
Donating books and other items
Are you looking for a home for your books, DVDs, and musical instruments?
We think it's great that you want to share with your community, and naturally you thought of the Library. You're not alone. Each year, we receive many hundreds of donated items—much more than we can accommodate.
Storing, sorting, and disposing of unused items creates work for our staff, and the Library also pays to have unused items recycled, so please check the list below to see what types of items we accept.
What you can donate
Items in our collection get a lot of love! Donated items need to be in excellent condition to stand up to the wear and tear. Because of storage space, we will accept a maximum of 20 items per household. The Library is unable to return donations.
We do accept:
- Recent bestsellers and books (any language) that have been published in the last 5 years
- Classics in new editions
- Local history titles
- DVDs, Blu-rays, and music CDs must have their original liners
- Items for our Beyond Books collection
- Musical instruments—string, keyboards, and hand drums only
We do not accept:
- Items that are out-of-date or soon to be, for example older computer models, VHS tapes and cassettes, magazines, textbooks, travel guides. Generally, most nonfiction older than 5 years won't be added to the collection
- Items that are likely to be in low demand, for example Encyclopedias, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books
- Items that are already well-stocked (check the catalogue to see if copies are available, or if the subject is already well-covered by other titles)
- Items in poor condition, for example items with yellowing pages, musty or moldy books
- Large quantities of used items
These types of items aren't suited to Library life. You may still have some alternatives:
- Donate to a thrift shop or the Salvation Army
- Donate to a local charity—several charities host book sale fundraisers including Kermesse and Women for Music
- Recycling—there's information on the Halifax website about how to recycle books
A few things to keep in mind
- We actively manage our collection. We'll decide how to classify, shelve, and display donated items. Most donated items to the Library are given away for free.
- We don't provide tax receipts for books and other donated items.
- We are unable to pick up donations of books and other items.
- Authors interested in donating copies of their own work should complete the form on our Information for Creators page.
- We loan very specific models of many of our non-traditional beyond-books items (radon detectors, light therapy lamps, etc.) and will not be able to add alternative makes/models to the collection.
- The Library has limited capacity for musical instruments and other non-traditional items, so may give donated items away or recycle them rather than add them to the collection.
How to donate items
If you have an item that we're looking for, you can drop off donations at any of our branches, opens a new window.
