NLB: Book Exchange 2011

Michi covered this in her previous post, and it's my pleasure to share with you our experience!

 
It's exactly what it sounds like: the Singapore National Library organized (and will continue to organize!) an event where you can exchange your used books for other peoples' used books. I had a bunch of books I never touched anymore sitting around at home, and Michi is an avid reader, so we decided why the heck not. For every book turned in we were issued an exchange coupon, and when April 16 rolled around we went with 9 coupons in hand. We figured since the event only started at 8:30am, getting there by 8:00am wouldn't be too bad--

...just kidding!

...yeah, that's how long the queue in front of (and halfway around) the building was when we got there by 8:10am. According to some of the volunteers at the event, the first people came to queue up as early as 6:00am in the morning! Gotta love the kiasu (afraid to lose) mentality of Singaporeans... In any case, the queue moved quickly enough and we were able to enter the exchange area by 8:45am.

The place was packed.

That's got to be at least a third of the population in there. And this was just the exchange area; there were tons of others still queuing to get in!

It was our first time attending this event and it was surprisingly well organized despite how chaotic it looked. Books were piled moderately neatly in different bins according to their categories - fiction, non-fiction, adult, children, Chinese, English - and despite the amount of people present, it wasn't too loud or pushy.

A lot of folks actually brought their own carriers, tote bags, and even trolleys! to the event. Many seemed to just grab whatever books were within their reach before sifting through their picks on the nearby stairs, and everywhere there were loaded baskets and people struggling with carrying their mounds of books to the checkout counter. And even while we were queuing in the checkout, there were yet more books being unloaded! Just boxes and stacks and cartons of them continuously being brought in. I can't even begin to imagine how many books must have gotten turned in overall.

It's like a warehouse!

We didn't honestly expect to use up all nine of our exchange coupons since we figured there might be not great selections or that the best books would get snatched up quickly, but Michi seemed pleasantly surprised when she found at least four books she'd been searching for within her first minute in. Forty minutes later and she'd gotten all the books she'd wanted, and she was pretty darn happy with her finds.

Her final selections. Well, no, she put back War of the Worlds for Arabian Nights in the end. ...It was a hard decision. Sorry, H.G Wells, we'll pick you up from the library.

I'm not much of a book person, so I'm glad my unloved old books are out there making someone else happy. We even got a free Aloe Vera drink for filling out a satisfaction survey after we turned in our coupons! We've both signed up for the NLB e-newsletter in any case, so if there're any other upcoming book events you can bet we'll be blogging about it.

That's mine! ...hush you, I liked it.