Changes to sale go by the book.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

Stricter rules were a hit with a record-breaking crowd attending the Friends of the Eugene Library Book Sale on Saturday and Sunday.

"Everybody I talked to said, 'I think it's good that you're dealing with this' and 'The rules make good sense,' ' event chairwoman Carol Hildebrand said.

Well, almost everybody, said Scott Landfield, a volunteer marshal enforcing rules against line-jumping, aisle-blocking and removing from circulation more than one box of books at a time.

"One person had come all the way from Seattle, planning to use an oversized cart," Landfield said. "When Carol handed out the rules about five minutes before the doors opened, this woman just exploded. We tried to tell her that we had smaller boxes inside for her to use, but she left in a rage. Other than that, it was smooth as can be."

Landfield, who owns Eugene's Tsunami Books, said the mood was happier than last year, when a few Internet book dealers used hired hands and huge containers to rush in and remove thousands of books from display tables.

After using electronic scanners to select high-value books for purchase, they left their jumbled rejects scattered around the building for Friends volunteers to re-sort and reshelve.

This year, by contrast, "the word 'civil' was used all day long," Landfield said. "And not only by volunteers, but also by shoppers. When I wandered among them, they kept marveling about how nobody was in anybody's way. I probably had 200 people thank me personally for enforcing the rules."

The sale drew about 4,000 book buyers Saturday, Hildebrand said.

That's about 1,000 more than last year's first-day attendance.

Another 1,200 shoppers showed up Sunday, she said. She had no total for Sunday attendance at the 2006 sale.

As always, some determined buyers lined up early.

"We started giving numbers to people in line at 4 a.m.," Landfield said. "It worked great."

About 500 people had lined up before the sale began at 9 a.m. Saturday, he said.

Hildebrand said organizers also limited the number of shoppers inside at any given time.

"We let the first 500 in, then admitted another 50 or so every five or 10 minutes as people began to check out with their purchases," she said.

The collective changes made for a virtually trouble-free sale, Hildebrand added.

"We had to remind a couple of people about not blocking the aisles - there are always a few folks who don't think the rules apply to them," she said. "They were sitting down on the floor, spreading their books around them and sorting through them in the aisles. But they complied as soon as we said something. Mostly, people were just grateful that the pace wasn't so frantic and they had a little more time to look at things."

This year's sale was also a record-breaker in terms of gross sales, she said. The event raised about $92,000 for Eugene Public Library programs and supplies, shattering last year's record of $80,000.