Stumbled upon a library booksale today....

[Posey]

and it was brilliant. Happened to be passing local library and saw a sign to the basement where sale ws taking place. Was greeted by about a dozen trestle tables of books. Kids, adult, fiction, non-fiction, audio-books, dvds. "Fill a carrier bag for £1" was the instruction
So dd chose 3, I chose 6, and I got a couple for nursery. And most were in great condition

So why do the do this? Some were pretty current books afaik. But still very pleased with our lucks.

I get so many books this way. It is great but I am often surprised at what they get rid of too.

Our library sells books for 10p and yes, some of them are very current, as in near enough new! I've managed to get all the 44 Scotland Street books, Harry Potter, Joanne Harris etc. As I have a tight budget it means I get to own books and I am a terrible hoarder. I sometimes get some really good kids ones too as my dts' love natural history and they aren't usually the ones sold first.

I don't know what the procedure is for chosing which books to sell.

They go from filling library bookshelves to filling mine and that can't be all bad!

Low usage. I think they run through their database for books which simply don't get borrowed.

Explains the ones we've got which have been stamped twice in their entire library career anyway...

Low usage, as kevlarhead says. The only "value for money" indicator a lot of local councils choose to understand is how many people borrow a specific title. So librarians might be obliged to withdraw and sell stock that they thought would be popular.
This is how almost all local authorities have managed to dispense with providing sheet music lending services btw
Stuff that is almost inaccessible to the general public now has been tossed into skips because it didn't go out on loan often enough
I work in a specialist music library and our shelves are full of good editions of rare items in mint condition, taken away in wheelbarrows from various London boroughs who weren't even going to bother selling them
So like you, we gained, Posey
But the whole trend does make me sad

What a shame for a library to take a policy to only stock books that are deemed popular. Surely that goes against the whole grain of a coherent collection. Might as well walk into my nearest Waterstones.

Our library often has a trolley of books for sale. Usually fairly obscure stuff or out of date guidebooks etc. The other week they had a sign saying 'holidays reads 10p each' so i bought 3 chick-lits, read them by the pool then passed them onto our rep. I wonder what happens to the ones they don't sell?

The people who set the Leisure budgets would not understand the concept of a coherent collection if it bit them on the arse, IME, blueshoes
There are honourable exceptions, luckily, but book budgets have been slashed in many local authorities. It's a soft target...partly because the success of Amazon and big chain bookstores has had an inevitable impact on people's usage of libraries.
I expect 44 Scotland Street made it on to the trolley because most of its target audience had bought it months ago in a bogof deal from Waterstones.
I am not that old but I can remember waiting lists of 20 plus for major new fiction releases at my big public library branch. This was pre the demise of the Net Book Agreement. I bet that doesn't happen now.

My Dad is caretaker for three libraries and gets to take hom LOADS of books from book sales as they don't sell. If no one buys them they get destroyed. Very sad. The upside for us is that the kids get lots of lovely free books which we then take to chaity shops when they have finished with them.

"Fill a carrier bag for £1"

I am so and at this too!!

But I had a triumph too lately- school library was practically giving them away at 10p, 30p, 50p each. I think I bought over 30 over a few weeks. I'm making headway....
But some of the copies were practically new! and half the joy in a children's library surely is finding dusty old tatty books from the 80s and 90s with all the previous borrowers' names in the front cover.

Gosh this is an old thread! just realised.

Yes, QQ, I completely agree. Knowing that a book has a history can actually add to its character, if that makes any sense!