Some arrive in clutched hands held close to the chest, and others in long-forgotten dusty boxes. No matter how a donation arrives at the Book Barn, it is welcomed by a team of volunteers who hand-sort each treasure into one of 54 categories, then group the books by size and carefully pack them into boxes. This meticulous work continues year-round until all 70,000 or so are sorted, priced and stacked in towering piles destined for the annual Friends of the LSU Libraries (FOLL) Book Bazaar held each spring. There, the secondhand books are transformed into vital financial support for LSU Libraries.

This year, FOLL is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Book Bazaar, a highly anticipated event that draws a crowd on opening day reminiscent of Black Friday in the early aughts. To date, the volunteer-powered used book sale has raised more than $2.75 million in total, directly resulting in the acquisition of rare materials, including The Kelmscott Chaucer (1896), sixteenth-century Mattioli woodblocks and the cash journal of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, all of which are used for research, instruction and public programming.

“Readers are just very special people,” FOLL vice president and longtime volunteer Anita Adams says, noting that many visitors stop simply to take in the smell. “If you’re not a reader, you don’t really get it. But if you are, we don’t even have to explain it.”

The FOLL organization was founded in 1962, and its work on the Book Bazaar has continued quietly yet consistently since 1976, when the first Book Bazaar was held as a modest flea market sale in the LSU Union, raising $500. Within a few years, the effort expanded dramatically, outgrowing the original sorting area in the basement of Hill Memorial Library and the Main Library, before it moved into its home at the Book Barn in LSU’s Warehouse District on River Road.

Most volunteers find the Book Barn quite by accident, and Adams is no exception. Around 2003, after retiring as an English teacher and administrator, she wandered into what she thought was a used bookstore in search of a new read. Instead, she walked out with a volunteer position. “It was very much kismet,” she says.

Paul Sandau, FOLL president and the person in charge of categorizing, researching and pricing rare and collectible books, was an avid Book Bazaar shopper. After scheduling a donation drop-off nearly a decade ago, he’s been volunteering his time and institutional knowledge ever since. More often than not, people know they are donating a valuable book, such as the first-edition copy of A Confederacy of Dunces donated a few years ago, which Sandau worked for weeks to verify and properly price.

“When you hand over something valuable to someone else, you have to trust that they’re going to be who they say they are, and do what they promised to do,” Adams says. “And I believe that in these 50 years, we have earned a reputation of being extremely good stewards of each donation, getting everything we can and giving it directly to the people to whom it was promised.”

The 50th anniversary Book Bazaar will be held in the John M. Parker Agricultural Coliseum, April 16 through 18. For shopping hours and more information, visit lib.lsu.edu/friends or follow @lsulibraries on Instagram.