When they arrived
Intake runs in waves — big estate and library hauls land in bursts, and the summer months run heavy. 2022 was the highest year on record here.
What they were
Mostly books — but a real river of recorded media too. Records, CDs, and DVDs are 21% of everything that came through.
Where they went next
At the scanning table, each item is routed to the channel that fits it best. Here is that routing — but read the note first, because the biggest bar is the one most people misunderstand.
The point of all of it
A donated library doesn’t end when it leaves the shelf. It fans out — one book to a reader on Amazon, a box of them to a wholesale partner, a pallet to a bulk buyer, an armful to a classroom or a free little library. The atlas above is really a map of second chances, at the scale of a small city’s worth of books.
The underlying figures are open: afterlife-atlas.json (CC BY 4.0). For the wider write-up, see our where donated books go explainer and the Book Necrology.
Questions
Does 'not individually listed at scan' mean the book was thrown away?
No. It only means the book was not put up as its own Amazon listing at the moment it was scanned. The large majority of those items still sold through bulk pallets or other marketplaces, or went to community reuse. Very little was recycled, and almost nothing was landfilled.
Where does this data come from?
From our own custody scans between 2021-04-23 and 2026-07-04 — 447,734 items in all. The figures are value-scrubbed: this page shows counts, product types, timing, and routing channels only, never prices or any information about the people who donated.
Is this everything NMLP has handled?
No — it is the items that passed through this particular scanning workflow. Real intake is higher, because not everything is scanned here. Treat these numbers as a large, honest sample, not a full census.
Do you appraise or estimate value here?
No. The Afterlife Atlas is about volume and destination, never value. The New Mexico Literacy Project is a for-profit reuse business serving the Albuquerque metro; it does not appraise books.
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