First off... have your school Librarian compile a serious "wish list" of books for your library.
Give the "wish list" to a local book store (I found the smaller independent book sellers are the most cooperative). The BIG book sellers - B&N and such, are too hard to deal with.
Encourage parents to visit this local book store to buy books for your library for the following occasions:
Ask your librarian if they would be willing to put a book plate into each book commemorating the donor and it's reason for donation. Announce the new book donations in your school's newsletter.
TESTIMONIAL: We had huge success collecting books with one of our volunteers, "Mr. Joe". (He's a retired high school teacher from our district who works with our kindergarteners.) News leaked out that Mr. Joe would be turning 80 last September and he didn't want ANY recognition.
Which we immediately disobeyed. We had a secret book drive to collect 80 books for our library in honor of his birthday. Well, it was a success!! We collected over 114 books - not just from our school, !! He almost cried!
Be creative. Is your principal or anyone on the school staff having a milestone birthday in the near future??
I had a 40th birthday party a few years ago and instead of getting those junky "Over the hill" presents, I asked everyone to bring a book for our school's library. I collected over 100 books from my family!! The Librarian was speechless and the local bookseller is forever in my debt!!
The local bookseller also donates awesome prizes to our school (Harry Potter, American Girl stuff) whenever we ask.
We do two book fairs a year with Scholastic. All of the proceeds go to our library/media center. In previous years the profits had been taken as books, but this year we took it part as books and the rest as cash. You can get a lot of books through Scholastic but many aren't library ready and they don't carry everything. Since our media center had just been expanded and the Board of Education was mandating an increase in emphasis toward non-fiction reading, the librarian needed to be able to get library bound books and they needed to be in some special areas of reading.
We did our fall book fair in November and touted it as a great opportunity to shop for the holidays. We had it open a couple days during school hours and then ended with a Saturday morning sale. We had breakfast, readings in the library, drawings, and Clifford the Big Red Dog paid a visit. We ended up with almost $500 in Scholastic books and vouchers and over $1400 in cash. The librarian was thrilled! We also had the teachers fill out wish list so they got books for their classrooms too. Just be creative!
I would suggest asking the librarian what she/he would like to see done before launching any huge book drives. When our new school opened the librarian did not want books donated because they were not "library ready". Instead she agreed to chair the book fair with a PTO rep and we agreed to allocate 50% of the funds from the bookfair directly for her use.
If she does want books - in addition to parents you may want to contact local book stores and/or national chains (Amazon?) and ask for contributions - then offer to hang signs in the library based upon donations made?
Our elementary and middle school just renovated our library, and we could use a lot of new books to fill it! Any ideas out there on innovative ways or drives for having parents, or anyone else for that matter, donate books?
