Friends of Library do a disservice to community

The Gazette carried the nonsensical advice that mother wants you to go to the library book sale (Oct. 26-28 at the former Von Maur store at Westdale Mall).

If you love books, go to the Internet archive: http://archive.org/index.php. Millions of books are available for free download, and the quality of many of these books is much greater than most of the books at the Friends of the Library Sale.

At the last day of the sale, the Friends of the Library have thousands of unwanted books they have to sell for a few dollars a boxful. Much of their material is unwanted and not useful. By paying homage to the gods of dead tree wood, the Friends of the Library do a disservice to this community, just as they did by insisting the last library be located in harm's way right next to the Cedar River.

If the Friends of the Library really cared about the brave new world of books, they would be passing out thumb drives with whole libraries on them at the next sale. Instead, they push the recycling of obsolete tree wood. Welcome to the past!

Gary Wallin

Cedar Rapids