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Thanks for your post, great advice.

Please ensure you include the book’s title, author, and year/​edition, as well as any other information requested by the library. If you’re a university group organiser, it’s likely helpful to note that you’re with a university student group.

Maybe include the ISBN as well. For academic libraries, it’s also helpful to say which students the book is relevant for. Peter Singer’s books would be relevant for the Arts students studying philosophy, for example. Academic libraries can buy some extracurricular resources, but most of the budget is for course-relevant resources.

It’s important to actually use the books after they arrive! Libraries will look at metrics like the number of times a book is borrowed, the number of unique borrowers, date it was last borrowed, etc. Books that don’t get used will eventually be weeded out of the collection. Books that are borrowed a lot may justify multiple copies.

It may be additionally possible to suggest featuring a book /​ putting it in public display for discovery.

In my case (libraries in Québec) I was initially surprised at how libraries were receptive (likely to purchase) to book suggestions.