IMO the Wheelpro [1] book is far better for actually building a wheel. Brandt's book is great, but it's more an engineering textbook explaining why the (generally) strongest wheel is three-cross with butted (swaged) spokes and how spoke tying is irrelevant.

A lot of Brandt's conclusions aren't as relevant in the modern world of carbon fiber rims, which are so stiff that all sorts of interesting things can be done with regards to spoke count.

(For those that aren't aware, carbon rims are so stiff they don't really get trued. They need to be centered so there's no wobble/runout, but tensioning an individual spoke, or even a few near each other, won't create a hop like it does on a flexible metal rim. So building a carbon wheel is more an exercise in evenly bringing up tension while maintaining proper dish and horizontal and lateral centering, but they don't get trued in the traditional sense.)

[1] https://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php

Library staff seem to prefer selling all books that are donated to them. Are there exceptions to this?

A librarian friend explained to me that books they distribute need generally need some extra tagging, bar coding, perhaps cover wrapping to make them more durable, etc. Libraries also curate their collections because they only have so much shelf space.

For a library the money from selling donated books is more valuable than a bunch of (more often than not) filler that'd need to be prepped for loaning (the barcoding, etc) and sorting through to see if they are worth adding to the collection. That money can then be used for books or other library programming.

(Not to mention the awful state some donated books are in... Missing pages, all sorts of things inside of them... Porn stored inside... Wrong covers because of people pulling things... Imagine having to flip through every book to check them out prior to doing all the other prep. It's far simpler to acquire the books from known sources.)