Bookmarks

It’s amazing the things you find in books. Going through our new stock, Charlie and I have found a wide range of “place holders.” Having worked in a library for years, it was not the startling experience for me it was for him.

I have found the normal wide range of bookmarks: handmade for Grandma, store bought for the Harley lover. At the library where I worked as a page in 1996, we had a bulletin board dedicated to bookmarks we’d recovered from returning books. My favorite bookmark was the one of a professionally dressed woman, standing on a street corner holding a sign that read, “Will work for Cappucino.”

But I’ve also found toilet paper, wrapping paper, utility bills, money, checks, pamphlets, leaflets, funeral programs, porn – even a condom wrapper. (As you might imagine, we try hard not to ponder why particular items might have been used.)

At that same job, I received a frantic phone call from a patron. He had returned a book with $40 in it. I promised to check on it. Going out to the stacks, I found the book – with two $20 bills still securely tucked inside. Against all odds, the book and its contents had survived being tossed into a book drop, scanned back into the system, and shelved. The guy came and got his book – and the staff had a chuckle at his expense. (Moral of the story: Don’t use money – or anything else you really don’t want to lose – as a bookmark. You probably won’t be so fortunate.)

The library book drop also provided interesting non-book returns. There was a gun. A knife. On the rare occasion we made such a find, we couldn’t check in the book drop cart until the police came and took care of the problem. We’d get video store returns. School library books. Personal videos. (No, I don’t know *how personal* they were.) Condom wrappers. (Seriously, what was up with that? We have surveillance cameras, you know!) When unmarked books came through, we were never sure if they were donations – or somebody accidentally included their books in with ours. Most phone calls we received about accidental deliveries started out with, “I sent my husband to return our library books, but…”

Probably the funniest “find” occurred before my time. A baggy of pot was found in the book drop. My sweet, innocent boss thought it was loose-leaf tea and put it on the staff coffee cart. One of my co-workers knew what it was. She took it home and had a private party!

So now it is time for me to gather the pile of recent discards. This particular pile includes numerous tracts, a couple of funeral notices, church advertisements, and a ton of bookmarks.

If you need a bookmark, let us know. We have extra!