Friends of the Library Find Unexpected Treasures Among Donated Books
June 23, 2016 —
We’re thankful for all the book treasures that people donate for the Friends of the Library book sales. Sometimes, though, the Friends encounter treasures that never should have made it to the donate pile.
Friends member Bob Nulph ticks off the items in the current “lost souls” collection: three baby books; two personalized family tree books; an envelope of family photographs; a 1946 composition notebook containing notes about speed skating and Doling Park; and a 1946 U.S. Army promotion document of Lt. Col. William Merton Aldous, Corps of Engineers.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll find some clue that leads us to somebody,” he says.
Bob has been collecting items and trying to track down their owners for several years, and in February 2015 had his first success: He returned a baby book belonging to a man in Huntington Beach, Calif. The man emailed a thank-you note, with no further explanation.
“We see a lot of things dumped in boxes with a hodge-podge of different books,” he says. “My guess is they’re cleaning Grandma’s stuff out, or Mom’s stuff out. Most of the time I think they put stuff in by mistake,” Bob says. And then again, he says, some people may have no intention of keeping any of it.
Friends members flag unusual things while sorting and pricing the donated items gathered from the library branches. One member specializes in researching the value of rare books and collectibles. Bob gets the more unusual items – family scrapbooks, photographs, journals, and scours them for some clue – a name or phone number, military rank.
The detective work can take weeks or months, and he often hits dead ends, he admits. So he is enlisting the help of fellow Friends through a regular column in their newsletter, but he’s also willing to take help from community volunteers who enjoy the challenge. Interested individuals can email him at b.nulph@sbcglobal.net.
“I’m into genealogy and this follows along that line,” Bob says. “I just hate to see stuff being thrown away by mistake.”