Parole Rotary books project finds home near Annapolis
After 18-month hiatus, B.I.G. is ready to reopen its doors
Eighteen months after the Rotary Club of Parole shut down its long-running project that sent millions of books to impoverished nations around the world, Books for International Goodwill is ready to get back in business.
A spokesman for the Parole Rotary announced this week that it would begin accepting books Oct. 20 at its new warehouse, 451 Defense Highway just outside Annapolis.
Buzz Stillinger, a spokesman for the project, said in an email that the new location will accept books around the clock at a drop-off shed set up outside the warehouse.
“While all types of books are useful, priority is given to non-fiction, textbooks and children’s books,” he wrote.
B.I.G started in an old tobacco warehouse in Wayson’s Corner more than two decades ago. But in February 2016, it lost its lease on warehouse space in the old Capital Gazette building off Gibralter Avenue. A final sale at the location was held in January 2017.
Capital Gazette moved out in 2014 after the newsgroup was sold to the Baltimore Sun Media Group.
The building is now home to Monarch Academy, an Anne Arundel County Public Schools contract school, and is being used as temporary space by the Annapolis Regional Library as its new building is constructed on West Street.
Books deemed not suitable for shipment overseas are sold off at regularly scheduled B.I.G. sales to local readers. The first will take place at the new location from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 8.
Hundreds of volunteers sort through the donated books, culling the ones to be shipped overseas. Volunteers are needed on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month from 8 a.m. to noon, and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information, call 410 757 2785, email 4bigbooks@gmail.com or visit www.big-books.org.