Twice a year, the Memorial Union puts on a used magazine sale in order to attract students to the underused browsing library on the first floor.

The MU browsing library staff puts on this semi-annual event, which is held in the Memorial Union browsing library. Catherine Clark, a clerk in the student activities center, heads the event, and has been doing so for seven years.

The event has been going on for years, however, predating Clark.

“My understanding of this event is an awareness thing,” Clark said. “We want to bring people into the browsing library, maybe people who have never been there before. So we hold this special event hoping to catch people’s attention, and bring them into this room in Memorial Union.”

At the sale, there are several tables of used magazines that are sold for $0.25 a piece. These magazines are donated mainly by the staff of the MU.

Clark says she thinks people don’t go into the browsing library much is because it’s small and tucked away, and also because it isn’t very promoted.

At this time, there are no other promotional events for the browsing library. However, Clark says she hopes this will change.

“When I was doing the materials for the magazine sale, I said, ‘why don’t we make signs that talk about some of the neat features in [the library], and make them undated?’” Clark said. 

Some of the features in the library include a chessboard, a jigsaw puzzle area, a computer lab with a printer, comfortable furniture, a music stand looking phone charging station including five or six phone chargers and even a small chapel.

All of the services in the library, with the exception of printing in the computer lab, are completely free to students and staff.

The magazine sale will be set up on three tables, where the donated magazines will be sorted into various categories.

To prepare for this event, Clark sent out an email a few weeks beforehand, asking anyone to donate their unwanted magazines. A couple weeks before the sale, her and her six-man staff hung 280 posters around campus to advertise the event. The library was also given a good cleaning for the visitors.

Trevor Dammon, senior in mathematics, has been working in the library for two semesters now and helped by putting up flyers and setting up books for the event.

“This room is really cool, and I don’t see a lot of people come in usually,” said Dammon. “Something likes this draws people in. More people come in during that week.”

Clark says that the magazine sale isn’t necessarily a huge money maker, but she does notice a change in the flow of traffic the week of the event.

Proceeds from the event go toward renewing the subscriptions to the magazines that are currently available in the browsing library.

The event will be held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, Dec. 9 to Thursday, Dec. 13 and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday.