Queen Anne Book Company of Seattle is working with Washington State Librarians and its Institutional Library Services (programs under the WA Secretary of State) to collect book donations from wish lists and send them to institutional libraries around the state.
The wish lists are posted on Queen Anne Book Company’s website, under the Community Support tab and currently featured on the store’s home page. These lists are also posted on the Institutional Library Services page. Donors can choose a facility to which they want to donate and pick and pay for books online. The store ships the books directly to the librarian of that facility. Librarians give the store requests for the collection; the QABC staff maintains the lists, organizes the donations, and sends them to the libraries.
The libraries getting donations are in prisons and state hospitals, serving nine medium and maximum security prisons from Spokane to Aberdeen. Via library services, the books go to people who are incarcerated or hospitalized. All donations go directly to libraries for incarcerated and hospitalized patrons to check out. (The store also partners with the Books to Prisoners nonprofit, which fulfills book requests from around the country.)
Donors have already purchased several titles, and a social media post resulted in an exciting and uplifting surprise: Natalie Diaz, one of the authors of one of the books requested by Clallam Bay Corrections Center– When My Brother was an Aztec–– saw a tweet the store made about the prison wishlists and reached out to her publishers to get copies to the institution!
This partnership gives donors the opportunity to support readers in state hospitals and prisons and a local, small business at the same time.
Many thanks to Cindy Aden, Anna Nash, Laura Sherbo, Leanna Hammond, and Rita Hawkins on the Secretary of State/ Washington State Library side. The Queen Anne Book Company team that worked with them to make it happen includes Krijn, Janis, Kim, and Tegan. Queen Anne Book Company would also like to thank author Garth Stein, who invited to store to participate in his event for volunteers at the Talking Book and Braille Library, where the store and libraries connected to start coming up with these plans.