Ed and Jan Fibiger can now see their apartment walls, and it's a strange feeling. The Bismarck couple recently boxed up half a dozen bookshelves in their apartment and combined those books with 48 more filled boxes in their garage and donated them all - a total of 75 cartons of books at 50 to 60 books to a carton - to the Bismarck Public Library and the upcoming used book sale sponsored by the Friends of the Library: Best guess: 6,000 to 7,000 books, the largest private donation ever, said Mary Jane Schmaltz, library assistant director.

Ed and Jan Fibiger have six children between them, so they did hold back about 1,500 books for the kids, they said.

Ed Fibiger, a native of Mandan, has been collecting books since 1964, "about things I liked, things I was interested in and things I was ignorant about," he said; mostly nonfiction and lots of history, particularly from the period of the 1930s through World War II and the Vietnam era. His wife said she reads everything from biographies and mysteries and fiction to craft books and cookbooks.

If forced to choose, Ed Fibiger said he would save his William Faulkner; and Jan Fibiger, her family Bible and her latest knitting project book.

The couple actually includes book-buying as a line item in their monthly budgeting, Jan Fibiger said.

Not every book they have has been read, but mostly all have at least been skimmed, she said.

The couple decided the walls of books weren't doing anybody any good, Ed Fibiger said.

"It was time to recycle,â€" he said.

Ed Fibiger, in fact, had designated the library to get the books in his will, so he thought, "why wait?"

As long as they were still physically able to box up the collection, they would do so now.

And in combing through their collection, they found some cool stuff, including prints by Depression-era WPA artists, he said.

So they packed up the bulk of the collection and delivered it to the Bismarck library for inclusion in the book sale, which is coming up March 2-4 in the library's Meeting Room A.

As usual, the sale offers books by the pound:$1 per pound for hardcovers and 50 cents a pound for paperbacks. Sale hours will be 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. March 2 and 3, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 4.

Most of the library's book sales have offered anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 books, said Schmaltz.

Libraries must constantly weed out their stacks, she said, to make room for 15,000-18,000 new books they acquire each year, she said.

So with their own shelves cleared off, the Fibigers will continue to expend their monthly book budget, they said.

As for their donated books: "I miss them already," Ed Fibiger said.