Fred de Sam Lazaro:

It's a typical Saturday morning, and Selena Hamer is training in a new shift of volunteers on how to choose which materials are suitable to send overseas.

About six million books are delivered to this football field-sized warehouse in Atlanta every year. Dozens of volunteers come in to sort through the piles. And, eventually, some three to four million make it out of here, destined for libraries and schools across Africa.

The organization is, aptly, called Books For Africa, and over the past 30 years, it has sent more than 41 million books, donated by schools, libraries and textbook companies, to 53 different countries. It all began when a Minnesota bookseller named Tom Warth, on vacation in Africa, happened to visit a library, says the group's executive director, Pat Plonski.