I've had the same one for years - with very little trouble until recently. Lately I've gotten smoky books, books falling apart, and lots of declines which I never got before.

So can you review it?

"Please no books that strongly smell of Smoke or that smell of mold without checking with me first. PLEASE CHECK WITH ME - as I often will accept books in this condition if it's something I've had trouble getting!

If in doubt on something, feel free to PM me and ask - I may accept the book anyway!

If it is a homeschooling book - please no written in books without checking with me first."

I have no problem with this RC, pretty clear and I'd probably pm you anyway just to be safe.

I think alot of people would decline because they do not wish to PM someone about a book.

I totally understand if you have issues with certain book smells but how strong a smell is depends on each persons nose. What I think is strong smelling would not be strong for others. To me a strong smell on a book is one that you can smell before you even open the pages.

Maybe ask "If the book has smoke or mold smells, please check with me first ..Darla"

Looks fine to me...but I sure have read a lot of comments where people don't want to bother sending a PM.

Edit - beat me to it...

You need your name to appear in your RC if you want folks to contact you first.

Are you aware that you can turn your RC off before making a request? f you are requesting a book that you have had trouble getting, you should consider turning your RC off, rather than risking be refused for something that doesn't even matter to you.

Also, you don't need the RC for writing in homeschooling books. This is against PBS posting guidelines, so if a book comes to you with writing, you would have to file RWAP, whether or not it was in your RC''s. The shorter your RC's, the better, IMHO, so take off the dead weight . . .

You need your name to appear in your RC if you want folks to contact you first.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case anymore; I think this got changed in the last round of site tweaks. Now when conditions come up on my account page, there's a button to PM the requestor. I'm not 100% certain though, since I've never needed to do it.

The RCs sound fine to me; I'm not sure why people would be having problems with them all of a sudden. Maybe it's just one of thise weird site cycles.

I think it's pretty clear, though again IMHO any "smell" other than smoke is so subjective I can see you getting turned down a lot for that one.  I'd take off the "I might take it" part, because that could be confusing..... and just turn off the RC as someone else suggested, if need be, OR specificy your specific title or titles for which you don't care!!  :)

And I'm sorry, Cindi, but you are wrong.  Textbooks (including homeschool, workbooks, etc.) MAY be posted with writing.  They are supposed to be PM'd first for approval, but it would be easy to forget to do so since you don't have to for anything else (except cookbooks), which is why I personally feel like they should take that off there completely (and have the same site rules for everything, never prior PMs required).  But because they ARE postable, I think Darla spelling it out beforehand that she wants zero writing is very courteous and helpful to anyone who does wish to post acceptable-within-PBS-guidelines-but-still-written-in workbooks.  :)  Here are the PBS rules from the helps doc (underlining mine to add emphasis):

Exception: if it is a textbook or workbook, these are expected to have highlighting/underlining/writing

• if you post a textbook/workbook, the condition must be described to the requestor in a Personal Message
• AND the described condition MUST BE AGREED TO before the book is sent
• This is the one of the ONLY two cases in which a PM exchange about a book is required before the book can be sent(the other is for cookbooks--see below).

(edited for spelling error, duh)