Clubs Organize Book Swap, Leftovers to Be Donated

Courtesy of Corbin Hirschhorn

Schools and programs in Paterson and Bergen County will soon be receiving a number of books donated by Ramapo students, professors and offices after last Wednesday’s book swap. The event, where members of the Ramapo community could bring a book to swap with another donated book, was cosponsored by the Literature Club, Ramapo Readers, the Music Club and the Salameno School of Humanities and Global Studies.

The Ramapo Readers will donate the leftover books before the end of the semester, once they are packaged up and ready to go.

“We have two main book recipients that we donate our books too,” said Gianna Acevedo, a student leader of Ramapo Readers, in an email. “We donate to the Paterson Public Schools and Project Literacy of Bergen County. We donate to Paterson to help build up their in-school libraries and to promote reading in the home, and to Project Literacy of Bergen County for adults who need reading material but are unable to obtain it on their own.”

According to Corbin Hirschhorn, the president of the Literature Club, because of the renovation of the B-wing, there was a surplus of books that needed to be removed. It was the vice president of Literature Club, Jessica Minzner, who eventually came up with the idea for a book swap.

“The idea started when Jess Minzner suggested something like the book swap, where students would bring one and they would swap it with another book there, so we would still have something to give back,” said Hirschhorn. “Then when we started working on this together we realized we could do a lot with entertainment, catering and things like that, so we had help from the Music Club who did a lot of live performances.”

Seeing a chance to involve many different on-campus clubs, the Literature Club contacted others to see who was interested in contributing to the event. In the end, the Literature Club organized the book swap, the Music Club provided entertainment and helped facilitate the actual event and the Ramapo Readers are handling the future donations.

“Corbin reached out to Ramapo Readers because he heard that we take large book donations,” explained Acevedo. “Our organization is always looking for book donations, especially from people within the Ramapo community, although a majority of our donors are outside of Ramapo.”

Books were donated by professors, students and from collective offices on campus. The number of books received far exceeded what was initially anticipated, explained Hirschhorn, and those who chose to swap their books had a variety of genres to choose from.

“We were worried there was going to be a lot of junk, but we did get fiction, essays. We did get some textbooklike material, a lot of history books, poly sci, British literature,” said Hirschhorn.

He went on to describe the book swap as a win-win for everyone involved.

“The donation is going to help the schools that are going to get that,” Hirschhorn said. “It’s good for the Ramapo Readers because they can’t do all of the collections themselves, they need help from other organizations. It was great for Lit Club, it was great for Music Club. Really the reason we spent so much time planning this event is because there were so many organizations that wanted to come forward to make something happen.”

rking2@ramapo.edu