Technically the entire name of the book is Biblical and Oriental Series: Tutankhamen and Egyptology. It was published in 1923 and is so difficult to find that not even Google will help me find an image of it. I found an entry on Amazon, but they don't have a copy and so they don't have a cover image. I'm too lazy, and it's too late for me to take a picture with my phone and import it to my laptop, so you'll have to pretend that I posted a picture of a book above this paragraph that is greenish blue and simply says the title and the word Mercer on it. Not sure if Mercer is the author or the publisher. Once again, Google foiled my GF research.
The reason I bring up this book is because it belongs to the Elmhurst Public Library, but for many decades between them purchasing it and now, it vanished. Someone checked it out in 1945 and just didn't return it. I'm sure the guy just forgot about it, and after time it became part of his own library because the book was just returned this summer with a note: "This book was recently discovered in my father's bookcase. With regrets for its long overdue status."
That's 78 fucking years late. I can't even imagine what the late fee would be. I worked there for almost 10 years, and in my time it was ten cents a day . . . until you reached a certain point that you went on a list. When we didn't have much to do, they had us call people on this list in an attempt to get the book (or movie or magazine or whatever) back. If we still didn't get it back, we just charged them for the book. If they came back to use the library again, they couldn't check anything else out until they either returned the book and paid the late fee or simply paid to replace the book. So something like this would not have happened during my time. I was thinking about calculating what that late fee might be for this book, but I don't have the date it was checked out, and I don't know the charge from back then or when the charges changed, etc. It would be an exercise in futility. But I am pretty curious. Almost curious enough to waste a reference librarian's time to find out. Earlier today I came pretty close to doing just that.
But 78 years isn't all that bad in the big picture. Here Google was very helpful because there are many instances of books being returned late all over the world, and sometimes a century or more has passed. Since I am curious as all fuck, I decided to find out what was the most overdue book in known history.
Unfortunately I couldn't find out what the title of the book was. All I know is that it's a history book, and it's written in German. It was borrowed from the Sidney Sussex College library in Cambridge back in 1667 or 1668 by Col. Robert Walpole. Not the first prime minster of Great Britain. No, this was Sir Robert Walpole's father. It was not returned until it was discovered in 1956! That makes it around 287 years overdue! The guy who found it was putting together a biography of Walpole, so I figure his descendants gave the author access to Walpole's library, where he found the book and realized, holy shit, this belongs to the college library! Weird to think that a guy doing research just stumbled upon something that was then enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The EPL eliminated late fees a few years back, so nothing is owed, but still. I wonder what they'll do with the book now. I doubt it's back in circulation. Perhaps they'll bring it to the historical museum at the Glos mansion. Which, by the way, was where the library started out life in a back room in 1916.
No comments:
Post a Comment