The Bookmark Bookstore / Donation Guidelines

Donation Guidelines

Your donations and purchases help raise funds for the Oakland Public Library! Please read and follow the guidelines below before bringing in your donations.

SPECIAL NOTE: Due to space and staffing constraints, all material donations are paused for August 2025, resuming September 5, 2025. Additionally, all material donations pause during store holiday closures and Member sale weekends. During non-sale weekends, beginning in September, we will accept items on Fridays and Saturdays between 12-4PM. Donations are limited to 4 boxes or bags at a time.
Please bring materials to our Donation Center at the end of the Bookmark Bookstore building by the 10th Street parking lot. Ring the doorbell at the gate on the lefthand side of the lot during our drop-in timeframe on Fridays and Saturdays between 12-4PM, and a volunteer will come out to assist you. For those delivering donations in a car, we will open the electric parking lot gate for your temporary vehicle entry. A parking space is available for unloading in front of the large roll-up door on the lefthand side of the lot.
If you are not sure that your donation fits with what we have described or if you wish to donate more than our maximum for drop-in, please email us at bookmark@fopl.org with a description of what you would like to donate with photos if possible. If you cannot email, please call us and ask for the manager: (510) 444-0473
Items must be in clean condition without significant wear and tear. Please no moldy, water-damaged, or musty books from garage or basement storage. If your items have significantly bent, dog-eared, torn, or warped pages or covers, they are probably not presentable enough for us to sell.
Before arriving at the store, please check that we can accept your items using the lists below.

When donating, please consider: If you wouldn’t buy it, we probably can’t sell it.

Items we accept:

Books
Graphic Novels
Comic Books
Sheet Music
CDs (Commercial only - no self burned CDs) with album artwork insert and jewel case intact (no cracks)
DVDs (No exercise DVDs) - with cover artwork and case intact (prior rental DVDs are acceptable especially if sealed)
Blu-Rays - with cover artwork and case intact
Vinyl (in Good to Excellent condition - particularly Hip-Hop, Rock, Jazz) - must have sleeve, LPs preferred over 45s
Videogames
Puzzles & Games (must be complete, and we will take your word for it)

Items we cannot accept:

Moldy, musty, dirty, or water-damaged books
Torn, bent, or dog-eared books
Highlighted, underlined, or hand-annotated books
Insect- or rodent-damaged books
Readers Digest condensed books and magazines
Encyclopedia sets (unless vintage, e.g., pre-World War II era)
Modern mass market magazines with daily or weekly distribution (no National Geographic, New Yorker, or TIME unless they are vintage/pre-1970s)
Ex-library books
Cassettes
VHS tapes
Travel or computer books older than 5 years old

Additional items we accept:

Ephemera - postcards (mailed or blank), trading cards, vintage posters, concert programs, stamps, bizarre or interesting pamphlets, old photographs, and other historical and unusual items.
“Oaklandia” - items of specifically Oakland interest such as yearbooks, pre-1960 phonebooks, vintage music flyers from local venues, menus from Oakland restaurants of yesteryear, old newspapers, etc.
Magazines - see exceptions above; we are especially interested in vintage, niche, comic book, science fiction, horror, and UFO magazines. Examples of specific titles that we accept: Interview, Vogue and other fashion magazines, LIFE Magazine original run (1936-1972), Rolling Stone, Starlog, Famous Monsters of Filmland, MAKE, etc.
Counter Culture/Sub-Culture/Fringe Culture publications from the pre-internet age… unique, bizarre, exotic and outlandish publications are of particular interest.

Please remember: We have a small number of volunteers who sort through our donations – please respect their time and recycle unacceptable items on your own. Thank you!

Looking for an alternative place to donate your gently used items while the Bookmark has paused material donations? Try these suggested organizations below (and please confirm their donation policies and hours before making a special trip).