LEBANON — For the fourth time in six years, there will be no Five Colleges Book Sale.

The charitable fundraiser, which annually attracts thousands of book buyers who leave the weekend-long Spring sale with bags stuffed full of used books, has been canceled this spring due to not being able to secure a storage and processing site.

“We contacted the owners of over 30 places the past six months but haven’t been able to find anything big enough or close enough (to Lebanon High School) because the places we’d used before are taken,” Natalie Golden, chairwoman of the book sale, said this week.

Organizers announced on social media this month that the annual used books sale-a-thon — which was set for April 18-20 — had been canceled.

First held in 1962 when the donated books were received and sorted in the basement of the home of the Dartmouth College president, proceeds from the weekend-long event go to benefit scholarships at Smith College, Wellesely College, Mount Holyoke College, Vassar College and Simmons College.

In recent years, the sale has generated proceeds of between $10,000 to $12,000 per college.

Organizers canceled the book sale because of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 through 2022. It returned in 2023 and 2024, first at an empty retail space on Route 12A and then last year at its usual location at Lebanon High School.

Golden said organizers require about 10,000 square feet to receive, sort, price and store the books in the run-up to the sale.

About 60,000 books are donated — some from as far away as Rumney, N.H., and Concord — of which between 40,000 to 45,000 typically are deemed eligible for sale. A moving company is hired to transport the books to the sale site at Lebanon High School.

Books that don’t make the cut are donated to Better World Books, an online retailer of donated books that itself donates inventory to nonprofits. Others — “if they are moldy and have too many marks on them,” — are sent out for pulping, Golden said.

“There are only so many copies of a Dan Brown novel you can sell,” she explained of the culling process.

Typically, the organizers seek a short-term lease of about two months, stretching from about six weeks before the sale to two weeks following.

Five Colleges Book Sale accepts donations for one month and then has a two-week window from when it stops accepting donations to when the sale begins to allow time to select, sort and price.

In recent years, they used the retail space in the former Sears store — now occupied by the recently opened Planet Fitness — and Olympia Sports in Upper Valley Plaza.

But Golden said the plaza owner, WS Development, informed them “they are in negotiation” for a new tenant for the former Olympia Sports location.

“They’ve been great,” Golden said of WS Development, noting that in recent years the plaza owner has not even asked Five Colleges Book Sale to pay rent for use of the space.

“But this year they have nothing available,” she said.

Patty Spencer, a volunteer who has been helping to lead the search, said they had tried to get space at the former Dulac’s Hardware and Building Supply on Mechanic Street and former Harley Davidson dealership on Miracle Mile — either “which would be ideal” — but were told by leasing agents the property owners did not want to enter into short-term leases.

“I don’t usually start looking until January but no one is going to rent to us a short-term lease unless they are pretty sure they are not going to rent the space in the next couple months,” Spencer explained. “There’s no sense in getting started too early because people are still hopeful someone will come along and buy the space.”

Over the years, organizers secured locations to sorting space at the former Hanover Transfer & Storage facility behind the post office in White River Junction, the former Wilson Tire warehouse adjacent to Centerra Marketplace on Route 120 and at Hypertherm on Etna Road in Lebanon and in a space that “older volunteers” said had once been a “brothel” in White River Junction, Golden said.

One obvious space, the former JCPenney at Upper Valley Plaza has been vacant since it closed in 2020 and at 64,000-square-feet has more than enough room. It was utilized to administer vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That space is not usable, however.

“There are problems with the roof,” Golden said, in addition to having a “weird, moldy-type smell.”

Not only is finding a space large enough a challenge, but they also need adequate parking space for volunteers. And although there was space with good parking available in Claremont — Golden cited the recently closed Big Lots store — many volunteers are older and traveling that far is inconvenient.

“We figured no one is going to want to spend an hour a day commuting back and forth,” Spencer said. “If you’re volunteering every day for six weeks you really don’t want to spend a significant portion of that on the road wasting gasoline.”

Adequate heating is also an issue.

“That was part of the problem this year — getting that right mix of square footage, heating, parking and an easy place for people to drop off their books,” she said.

All together about 100 volunteers participate in organizing and running the sale, including some pricing specialists who have been lending their expertise for more than 20 years.

“We have a psychologist that prices the psychology books and an antiquarian bookseller who prices the antiquarian books,” Golden said.

Organizers had been looking forward to welcoming a new group of first-time volunteers for the upcoming sale.

“We lost a fair number after COVID,” she said. “What is so unfortunate about this year is that we had done some publicity and we had over 36 new volunteers who were getting ready to help us.”

But Golden already is thinking about 2026.

One space that in theory could be available is the soon-to-close Joann Fabric and Crafts store in the Target shopping plaza in West Lebanon.

“That would probably have enough space both for sorting and the sale,” Golden said, qualifying she is “really bad at judging” space (and it might not have enough fire exits, limiting the number of people in the space at any one time).

Golden said canceling the Five Colleges Book Sale points to a bigger — and perennial — issue in the Upper Valley that affects other community organizations.

“It would be nice if we had some community-type center somewhere that had a big, open space that community organizations could use on short-term basis,” said Golden, a retired teacher at The Sharon Academy who has been a volunteer with the book sale for 25 years.

“But I don’t see that happening,” she said.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.