Snippets from the Shelves

by John J. Brice, Librarian

Some days I am truly amazed at the news. For example, as I was reading the paper today I found a news story from the Associated Press about Joel Schlesinger, a man in Orchard Park, N.Y. Mr. Schlesinger borrowed a book in 1981 from his hometown library in suburban Buffalo and recently found it while spring cleaning his attic. Mr. Schlesinger, being a good library patron, returned it along with $2,190 in fines. Isn’t it amazing how a 10-cents-a-day fine adds up?

Of course the library did not charge this fine as their policy is similar to ours in that the maximum fine is only $10.00. Mr. Schlesinger was just trying to help out his hometown library by paying the full fine and he hoped that the library could buy some books.

Of course, the Orchard Park book was nowhere near the champion for longest overdue and returned library book. That record belongs to Sidney Sussex College Library in Oxford England. A copy of a German biography of the Archbishop of Bremen was checked out in 1667 by Colonel Robert Walpole and not returned until 1956 by one of the borrower’s descendants. If you do the math that is over 285 years overdue which at twenty cents a day adds up to over $20,800!

Overdue books are always a big problem with any library. Everyone has good intentions when books are checked out but eventually a small percentage of the items we lend become misplaced, lost or otherwise overdue. Since 1991, when the computerized circulation system was installed, 3,694 materials have been checked out and not returned.

Considering that on average we purchased around 3,000 new books a year, having 3,694 books overdue is a rather significant number. In actual dollar terms to replace these items would cost us between $60,000 to $75,000.

So if you want to help out your local library and don’t have the means to pay four figure fines, feel free to give to our Patron’s Drive which is used to purchase new books. And if in your spring cleaning you run across a long forgotten library book please, please return it. Every item is important to us and even if it has been one, ten or a hundred years we will be glad to get our materials back. Who knows, you may have a record-breaker sitting in your attic.