Today I ran afoul of one of my biggest librarian pet peeves. Stickers.
I love donations. I bless our donators, and appreciate every single book that comes into our library. But every once and a while, they come with stickers, and it simply drives me up the wall. You see, every book with a sticker takes that much longer to process, because of course they don't just come off cleanly (for stickers that do pull right off with no residue I do a special little happy dance). There's peeling and poking and general nail-damaging work to be done just to prepare it for the SUDS goo to get the rest of it off. Especially annoying are the books from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful program (that provides free books every month for children from birth to five years old) and the books I receive as donations are always in great shape...except for the big address sticker across the back, which is near impossible to get off cleanly. When I actually want to keep these books for circulation, it takes five or ten minutes to clean the book up enough to send it to cataloguing. And when you're talking about a stack of twenty or so books, that's a lot of time that gets eaten up.
Today I was processing a pile of donated Wishbone and Goosebump books, many of them with Goodwill stickers on the back that proved nearly impossible to remove cleanly, without damaging the book. After the stack of thirty odd books, I was ready to tear my hair out. Just when the last one was finished and cleaned, who should arrive but my assistant director with a new stack of donated books, mostly picture books. I haven't been through the pile yet, but here's hoping it will be sticker free!
I found your site by doing a search for "Dolly Parton Library Sticker Residue." I HATE those stickers. Why don't they put them on the outside of the plastic bags, or on a piece of stiff paper? It RUINS the books. I've tried goo gone, spray cleaner, nail polish remover, fingernails, water, saliva, and baby wipes to remove the residue. I'm left with sticky, grimy books.
ReplyDeleteSo how do you remove the residue?
There's a product called SUDS that we use at the library. It works miracles. A quick internet search turned up nothing of the kind, however, so I'll have to look into it a little more and let you know.
ReplyDeleteOkily dokily, here's what I found out. There's a product called SUDS, which my library purchased from a traveling salesman, that gets off all the gooey mess. There's a website www.sudscleaner.com where you can buy it, and one tub will last forever. Hope that helps!
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