too many copies of a book?

May 17, 2012 6:24 AM

What to do with ~50 copies of a Physics Text?

for sentimental reasons, I can't throw them away or sell them, but I'd like to give them to some person/place that might find them useful (they are all copies of a graduate text in mechanics) - I'm toying with the idea of scattering them to physics departments across the (developing) world, and letting them place them with students or what-not. Any suggestions?

posted by youchirren to Education (7 answers total)

The International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste collects physics journals and books for distribution in the developing world. I'm not sure graduate texts would be specialized enough for them. Here is a list of book donation organizations (though it has not been updated since 2010, I clicked on a bunch of the links and they worked).
posted by bluefly at 6:56 AM on May 17, 2012

The International Society of African Scientists donates scientific and educational materials to universities in Africa and the Caribbean.
posted by bluefly at 7:06 AM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

If they're fairly current, you can donate them to schools and libraries in Africa. I did this through Books for Africa when I finished university and had too many books to move. It's easy to do and fairly cheap because you can ship the books via media mail. The cost of shipping and the market value of the books are tax-deductible. You can even pick a specific country/project to send your books to if you'd like.

Anyway, it made me happy to think of my books being used and read instead of languishing in some library sale here in the United States.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 7:26 AM on May 17, 2012

Or Sudan-American Foundation for Education, with warehouses in IA and MD.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:44 PM on May 17, 2012

If they are paperback, there may be a local prison book program who could send some of the copies to folks who are looking for them -- college-level physics textbooks are a surprisingly common request from prisoners, who frequently have a lot of time and very little of interest to do. There's a list of prison book programs here. Note that almost no prisons allow hardcovers, though, so it wouldn't really work if they are hardcover.
posted by pie ninja at 12:47 PM on May 17, 2012

Ooh what book?
posted by Astragalus at 2:07 AM on May 18, 2012

I feel like there might be an interesting story here. Why is there a sentimental attachment to 50 copies of a textbook?
posted by airways at 12:12 PM on May 18, 2012