--- title: "Donate or Throw Away Old Books? Decide With Confidence" description: "Should you donate or throw away old books? Learn what to check before you decide, from book condition to local options. Find out how to choose wisely." lang: en json-ld: | [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com/#organization", "name": "Give My Books Network", "legalName": "Book Sourcing Mastery, LLC", "url": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com", "logo": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com/social-card.jpg", "image": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com/social-card.jpg", "description": "Give My Books Network is a nationwide United States network of local Pick-Up Partners who collect used books, textbooks, CDs and DVDs for free directly from the donor's door, resell what is sellable and rehome the rest to schools, libraries, shelters and nonprofits.", "foundingDate": "2022", "telephone": "+1-855-506-8633", "email": "support@givemybooksnetwork.com", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "2091 Stratton Ct.", "addressLocality": "Ann Arbor", "addressRegion": "MI", "postalCode": "48108", "addressCountry": "US" }, "contactPoint": { "@type": "ContactPoint", "telephone": "+1-855-506-8633", "contactType": "customer service", "email": "support@givemybooksnetwork.com", "availableLanguage": "English" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/givemybooksnetwork", "https://www.instagram.com/givemybooksnetwork", "https://twitter.com/givemybooks" ], "areaServed": { "@type": "Country", "name": "United States" } }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Give My Books Network", "legalName": "Book Sourcing Mastery, LLC", "url": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com", "logo": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com/social-card.jpg", "image": "https://givemybooksnetwork.com/social-card.jpg", "description": "Give My Books Network provides free door-to-door book donation pickup services across the United States. We collect books, textbooks, CDs, DVDs, and more – giving your items a second life while supporting literacy programs.", "foundingDate": "2022", "telephone": "+1-855-506-8633", "email": "support@givemybooksnetwork.com", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "2091 Stratton Ct.", "addressLocality": "Ann Arbor", "addressRegion": "MI", "postalCode": "48108", "addressCountry": "US" }, "contactPoint": { "@type": "ContactPoint", "telephone": "+1-855-506-8633", "contactType": "customer service", "email": "support@givemybooksnetwork.com", "availableLanguage": "English" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/givemybooksnetwork", "https://www.instagram.com/givemybooksnetwork", "https://twitter.com/givemybooks", "https://littlefreelibrary.org/book-resource/give-my-books-network-give-me-books-program/" ], "areaServed": { "@type": "Country", "name": "United States" } } ] --- Feedback ![Give My Books Network Logo](/assets/gmbn-logo-BsMIhLrP.png) - Learn More Schedule Pick-UpGive ME BooksBecome a Pick-Up Partner Sign In Home› Austin, US› Learn More # Should You Donate or Throw Away Old Books? What to Do Before You Decide Should you donate or throw away old books? Learn what to check before you decide, from book condition to local options. Find out how to choose wisely. Schedule Free Pickup ![A stylized city skyline at golden hour with books in the foreground](/assets/city-scene-fallback-yglTcFEu.jpg) Austin, US ## Most Old Books Are Still Worth Donating. Here Is How to Tell Here's something most guides get wrong: they treat "old" like it means "unwanted." It doesn't. Age by itself tells you almost nothing about whether a book should be donated or tossed. We see this all the time. Someone hauls a box of 1970s paperbacks to the curb because they figure nobody wants them. But a worn copy of a beloved novel or a decades-old field guide? That can absolutely find a new reader. The real question isn't age. It's condition. Start with a basic physical check. Open the book flat. Does the spine crack badly or just fall apart in your hands? Are pages torn, water-stained, or straight-up missing? Heavy mold or a strong musty smell that won't air out no matter what you try? If you answered yes to most of those, the book probably can't be donated. But if the pages are intact, the text is readable, and the cover's just a little beat up, that book's a candidate. Mold is the one thing we take seriously above everything else. A single moldy book can spread spores to every other book in a box. Spot fuzzy growth or dark spotting on the pages or cover? Pull that book out immediately. Don't bag it with the others. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mold can start growing on organic materials like paper within 24 to 48 hours of moisture exposure \[Source: epa.gov\]. That's fast. And once it spreads inside a closed box, the damage multiplies in a hurry. Water damage is trickier to judge. Light waviness on the edges (what book people call "tide lines") is usually fine. The book dried out and stayed readable. No big deal. But if pages are stuck together, stiff, or warped so badly the book won't even close, it's crossed the line. Donation centers and pickup partners have to sort through everything they receive. Sending them damaged books wastes their time and can contaminate the good books sitting right next to them in the same bin. Textbooks are a category worth slowing down on. Older editions, anything more than two or three years old in a fast-changing subject like medicine or technology, usually don't get accepted by schools or libraries \[SOURCE TBD: library acquisition guidelines\]. But community organizations, adult literacy programs, and informal learning groups sometimes want them anyway. A 2005 chemistry textbook isn't landing on a university syllabus. But it might help someone studying for a GED or teaching themselves on their own time. That's not nothing. You're probably staring at a pile of books right now wondering if any of them are worth the effort. Here's the honest answer: most of them probably are. Last spring, we picked up a collection from a home in South Austin where the owner had held onto hundreds of books from the 1980s and 1990s. A mix of fiction, self-help, and reference titles. Almost 80 percent were in good enough shape to redistribute. The owner had assumed they were too old. They weren't. The ones we had to set aside were the ones with water damage from a slow roof leak. Not the ones that were simply old. Children's books deserve a specific note. They take more physical abuse than any other category. Torn pages, crayon marks, broken bindings. Super common. A book with a few crayon marks on the cover but clean, readable pages inside is still worth donating. A board book with chewed corners and missing pages? Not so much. Use your judgment, but lean toward donating if you're on the fence. Organizations that serve kids are often happy to receive books in less-than-perfect shape, as long as the content's intact and the book is safe to handle. The honest rule of thumb: if you'd feel okay handing it to a neighbor's kid or leaving it in a Little Free Library, it's probably fine to donate. If you'd be embarrassed to give it to someone, set it aside. That gut check works most of the time. ## These Types of Books Are Almost Always Accepted for Donation Most donation spots have a short list of books they turn away. But there's also a long list of books they almost always want. Knowing which is which saves you a lot of guesswork before you load up a box. Here's what we see move quickly and get accepted without issue, based on years of helping Austin residents sort through shelves before a move, a cleanout, or just a long-overdue purge. ### Fiction and General Reading Books Novels, short story collections, and general fiction are among the most requested book types at libraries, community centers, and book-sharing programs. Clean hardcovers and paperbacks in readable condition get snapped up fast. We've handed off boxes of used fiction to Little Free Libraries across South Austin within the same afternoon we collected them. No sorting drama. No rejections. The key word is "readable." Pages intact, spine not cracked in half, no water damage. That's really the bar. If you can sit down and read it, someone else can too. ### Children's Books and Young Adult Titles These are almost always in demand. Schools, pediatric waiting rooms, daycares, and nonprofits serving families actively seek children's picture books and early readers. According to the American Library Association, children's materials are among the highest-circulated categories in public libraries \[SOURCE TBD: American Library Association circulation data\]. So if you've got a shelf of picture books your kids outgrew, don't second-guess it. Young adult titles move well too. Think middle grade novels, graphic novels for teens, coming-of-age stories. We've seen YA collections get redistributed to school libraries and after-school programs in Central Texas within weeks of pickup. And here's what most guides get wrong about this: they tell you to only donate "classics." That's not how it actually works. Current popular titles, series books, even slightly dated YA from the 2000s all get used. Don't overthink the title selection. A home exists for most of it. ### Nonfiction on Evergreen Topics Cookbooks. Gardening guides. Craft and hobby books. Travel writing and self-help titles with general advice. These are the nonfiction books that don't go stale the way a 2009 tech manual does, and they stay in circulation for years. Biographies and memoirs hold up well too. A well-kept biography of a historical figure doesn't expire. Neither does a cookbook from twenty years ago. Older cookbooks are sometimes more sought after than new ones. We watched a 1980s Julia Child paperback get requested three times in one week through a community book-sharing network. Three times. Health and wellness books are worth a closer look before donating. General titles on fitness, mental health, and nutrition tend to be accepted. Very outdated medical advice books, especially anything pre-2000 on specific conditions or medications, may be declined by some programs. If you're not sure, include them and let the sorters decide. ### Textbooks (With Some Caveats) Textbooks are a mixed bag. Many are still accepted, especially editions from the last ten years in subjects like history, literature, math, and the sciences. Older editions of writing guides, grammar books, and composition texts are regularly redistributed to adult learners, GED programs, and ESL classes. According to a 2022 report from First Book, access to educational materials remains a significant gap for students in under-resourced communities \[SOURCE TBD: First Book 2022 impact data\]. Usable textbooks fill that gap directly. The editions that tend to get passed over are highly specialized professional manuals and law or medical textbooks more than a few years old. A tenth-grade biology textbook from five years ago, though? Still useful to someone in Austin's tutoring or homeschool community. ### Books in Good Physical Condition Across All Categories Condition matters more than category for most donation programs. A book that's clean, dry, and intact, regardless of genre, has a real chance of being accepted and redistributed. Programs like Give My Books Network, a nationwide community book-sharing network, collect books and media through local pickup partners who then sort and redistribute items to readers, schools, nonprofits, and organizations that request them. The standard is simple: if the book is something you'd pick up off a shelf and read, it's worth donating. That's the rule we use in the field, and it holds up every time. ## When Throwing Away Books Is Actually the Right Call Most people feel guilty throwing away a book. Totally understandable. But here's what we notice constantly in this work: people hold onto books that no one can use, then feel stuck because they don't want to "waste" them. Donating a book that's falling apart doesn't help anyone. It just moves the problem somewhere else. Some books genuinely belong in the trash. Or better yet, the recycling bin. Knowing which ones frees you up to handle the rest the right way. ### Books That Are Too Damaged to Pass Along Water damage is the big one. A book that got wet and dried out will have wavy, stiff pages and often a musty smell that just doesn't go away. That smell is mold. Even if you can't see visible mold growth, the spores are there. Donating that book to a school, a library, or a Little Free Library means passing mold spores into a shared space. Not a good outcome for anyone. Yeah, it's a hard call when the book itself looks mostly fine. We get it. But we've picked up boxes in Austin where the books on the bottom had been sitting against a concrete garage floor for years. The covers were soft, the pages were stuck together, and the whole box smelled like a wet basement. Those books went straight to recycling. There was no other honest option. Paperbacks with broken spines and pages falling out are another category to set aside. A reader can't use a book that loses pages 40 through 60 every time you pick it up. Organizations that receive donated books have to sort and inspect everything they get. Sending them damaged items adds to their labor without adding any value. Most donation programs, including book-sharing networks, can't redistribute items in poor condition. \[SOURCE TBD: Give My Books Network partner guidelines\] ### Heavily Written-In or Marked-Up Copies This one surprises people. A textbook covered in highlighter and margin notes feels like it still has life in it. And sometimes it does. A student might actually appreciate a well-annotated copy of a classic novel. But a workbook that's already been filled out? A journal with writing in it? Those aren't reusable. Same goes for books with names, addresses, or personal information written inside. Donating those creates a privacy issue the recipient shouldn't have to deal with. Old encyclopedias from the 1970s or 1980s fall into a similar gray zone. The information is outdated. Schools won't take them. Libraries almost never take them. Most donation programs end up recycling them anyway because there's simply no demand. \[Source: American Library Association, on encyclopedia donations. SOURCE TBD: specific ALA page\] So if you've got a full set of Britannica from 1983, the kindest thing you can do is call your local recycling center and ask about paper recycling pickup in Austin. ### Moldy, Pest-Damaged, or Chemically Contaminated Books Books that show signs of pest damage, silverfish trails, mouse droppings nearby, chewed corners, should not be donated. Full stop. The same goes for books stored near chemicals, paint, or anything with strong fumes. Paper absorbs odors and compounds. You may not notice it after years of exposure, but the next person absolutely will. Austin's heat and humidity push books stored in garages or storage units without climate control to degrade faster than people expect. We've opened boxes that looked completely fine on the outside and were totally compromised inside. So open the box. Flip through a few pages. Smell them. Your nose catches problems faster than a visual check most of the time. Honestly, it's the most reliable tool you've got. Throwing away books in these conditions isn't giving up on them. It's making an honest call so that your time, and the time of every volunteer or partner who handles donations, goes toward books that can actually reach a reader. That's the whole point. If you've got a large collection and you're not sure what's worth keeping in the pile, we're happy to help you figure it out. Give us a call. ### Ready to schedule your free Austin book pickup? We'll come to your door — no cost, no hassle. Book pickup, DVD pickup, large-quantity, estate, and more in Austin, US. Schedule Free Pickup Or browse all Austin donation services including Textbook Donations , Children's Book Donations , Book Donation Drop-Off . New to this? Our guide to [where to donate books](/where-to-donate-books) explains which books nobody can use any more, what happens to the rest, and how Austin, US pickups actually work. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How do you know if an old book is too damaged to donate? ### Can I donate old textbooks in Austin, Texas? ### Does Austin's climate affect how books hold up before donation? ### What is the biggest mistake people make when deciding to throw away old books? ### Are children's books worth donating even if they look worn? ### Where can I learn more about what to do with books before a home cleanout in Austin? ## More from Austin Learn More Best Places to Donate Used Books in 2026 Learn More How to Get Rid of a Large Book Collection: Donation, Sale, and Disposal Options Learn More Who Offers Free Book Collection Services for Unwanted Books? Service Textbook Donations in Austin Service Children's Book Donations in Austin Service Book Donation Drop-Off in Austin Back to Austin Donation Services ## Find us in Austin Our local Pick-Up Partners serve the Austin area. If your exact address is inside our service area, you can book a doorstep pickup today. Loading map of Austin, US… ## Ready to clear your shelves? Join thousands of Austin neighbors who have already donated their books through the Network. Schedule Free Pickup ![Give My Books Network Logo](/assets/gmbn-logo-BsMIhLrP.png) **America's Nationwide Community Book-Sharing Network.** Free book and media pickup service! Local Pick-Up Partners collect your donated books, CDs, DVDs, and media right from your doorstep. 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