Every month the Hekman Library receives many boxes of donated books from Calvin employees who are retiring, people who love the college and think of us when they are spring cleaning, and sometimes libraries that are closing and want to find good homes for their book collections.

We don't add all of these books to our shelves. Some we don't think are a good fit for an academic library like ours, and they end up in the perpetual book sale. Some are not in good condition or might be duplicates. We rarely toss anything out; a fair amount of the donated books end up going out to libraries around the world via the Theological Book Network, based right here in Grand Rapids. 

Here are stats for book donations for fall of 2012:

• total books donated - 1,653
• of those, books we already owned - 1,046
• unique titles - 595
• updated editions of existing books - 12

The library has a dedicated staff of two retirees, Bob Otte and John Kuipers, who process the donated books.