Guidelines for Vendor's Book Fairs and Book Sales to Students
An increasing number of vendors are making offers to schools and organizations to conduct book fairs or other promotional activities in order to increase their sales of books and educational materials. Of course, they are voicing the goal of putting books into the hands and homes of children and encouraging their interest in reading as a recreational activity. No one can say that this goal does not have worthwhile value.
Consider the advantages to the vendor. He or she not only offers a greater number of books to a larger number of potential buyers, but also eliminates the expense of a salesperson. Usually the company includes an attractive "kickback" (10% to 20% of the amount of the sales in cash or free books) to the party conducting the fair or activity. What school could not benefit from the extra money or books?
A problem arises when a vendor places personal monetary gain above the quality of merchandise and sound educational standards of literary content. It is not unusual for a vendor, in designing a book fair or other promotional scheme, to build into it a way of ridding warehouses of titles which are not popular as well as purposely offering some materials with great child or reader appeal to serve as "come - ons."
With this in mind, in order to assure that any materials offered for sale to children in schools are of high educational quality and to protect the instructional time of both staff and students, the following guidelines are set forth to govern the sale of any educational or instructional materials to students.
1. No materials shall be offered for sale to students which have not first been approved by professional staff members. (Note: This need not be a lengthy examination of each title, but should be a cursory review of the titles to ensure that nothing inappropriate is included.)
2. No time for student examination, selection, or purchase of materials shall be taken from instructional time during the school day.
3. No time for setting up or taking down the display, for bookkeeping or money collecting, or for any other duties pertaining to the conducting of the activity shall be used by professional staff members which detract from student' instructional time or jeopardize the quality of instruction.
Contact Gail Formanack, Supervisor of Library Services, with any further questions.