How to Get Rid of Used Law Books

Every week on the law librarian listservs to which I subscribe, there must be 3 or 4 offers of used law books, case law reporters, and/or runs of bound legal periodicals.

It's usually the case that one law firm is looking to dump its surplus material on another law firm (or law librarian).

Fair enough, but couldn't we be more creative?

The American Association of Law Libraries has come to the rescue in the February 2005 issue of The CRIV Sheet, a supplement to its monthly journal AALL Spectrum.

Here are some of the ideas the article on page 5 proposes for disposing of the extra material you no longer want:

• listservs, of course
• local restaurants: books on a shelf look good as décor and they help muffle noise
• local community-access cable TV stations love to use books as backdrops for interviews
• antique stores, furniture showrooms... again, for the ambiance books provide
• theatre troupes: books as set props
• interior decorators: some people will pay big bucks to have "big books" on their shelves
• used law book dealers
• E-Bay
• art classes - turn those Supreme Court Reports into a collage or into "altered books"