Thousands of books will be on offer at the event to help fund round-the-clock crisis support services.

Lifeline South-West manager of community engagement Carly Dennis said the event, which runs from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, was the organisation’s biggest annual fund-raiser.

“We would love to see $15,000 come through the door. We have had some wonderful sponsorships financially and in-kind from local businesses, which has been great,” she said.

“Our book fair’s sole purpose is to help us raise funds to increase our crisis support and suicide prevention services.

“We raise 90 per cent of our own revenue at Lifeline so this is our major fund-raising event.”

South-west businesses and the community have donated titles in a variety of interest areas. 

“We’ve got thousands upon thousands of fiction, we’ve got a lot in our arts, poetry and media section, some beautiful photography books and art books. There’s military and war and politics, biographies have also been a very popular category,” Mrs Dennis said.

“We’ve got a range of books that have been donated that are brand new, as well as our secondhand books and our beautiful vintage books.

“We’ve had amazing help from our volunteers, this event doesn’t run without our volunteers and without the support of the community.”

Mrs Dennis said south-west-based calltakers normally answer between 8000 to 12,000 calls a year, about 1200 of those from this region.

“But that obviously costs us money to house our crisis support services. The more often they’re answering calls the more it’s costing us, so the money that we raise ensures we’ve got people in around the clock,” she said.

“It goes towards staffing support and infrastructure.”

The book fair was held for the first time last year and raised about $10,000.

The book fair will run from 10am to 4pm from Good Friday to Easter Sunday at 134 Lava Street, Warrnambool.

Entry is by gold coin donation.