Found in a Library Book (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Found in a Library Book (2022)

oaklandlibrary.org

113 pointsbookofjoe27 comments

My father owns a used bookstore and he's always finding objects in books left there by previous owners.

One time he found a folded handwritten page in Latin which he sent me because I know Latin. It said

registrum baptizatorum succursalis ecclesia de Borlo anni 1807 / registrum mortuorum de Borlo

It was a handwritten record, kept in Latin by a priest, of all baptisms and deaths in Borlo (now Gingelom, Limburg, Belgium) in the year 1807. (There are a few issues with the Latin.)

I framed it and put it up on the wall as a decoration, but later I realized that it could have value for people's present-day genealogical research, so I mailed it back to the public library in the town. The librarian said it would be kept in the provincial archive.

We once wound a geocache in a hollowed out book. First it caused a lot of anger from some of my colleagues until it was confirmed that it wasn't one of our books, but one brought in from the outside. In the end it was tagged, registered, and put back on the shelf were it was found.

I would feel so violated if I accidentally left very personal handwritten notes in a library book that I returned, then have the library scan it and very publicly turn it into social media fodder. These notes are not for any of us to read.

I had the same reaction. Having one person read some personal info I'd accidentally forgotten would be one thing, but blasting it for the world to see just seems sort of disrespectful.

Granted, I'm also not a big personal social media guy in general, so maybe that's just my bias peeking through.

Respect your feelings, but I also consider this as motivation to make sure not to leave items in library books. I hold them up and page side down and fan the pages to make sure I didn't leave a bookmark in there.

Of course, the physical book will soon be a thing of the past at the public library (-_-) so I suppose these considerations will soon be moot.

is it considered ok to write notes on books borrowed from library? If it is, isn't it same as writing something on a public wall?

These are mostly photos and extra papers left inside a book. It'd be akin to a post-it on a public wall.

Library organisations like the American Library Association[1] and the International Federation of Library Associations[2] have codes of ethics that protect their users' privacy and intellectual property rights. I don't know that they cover this exact scenario, so maybe this library is just toeing the line, but I would agree that this is an upsetting violation of librarians' professional ethics.

[1]: https://www.ala.org/tools/ethics [2]: https://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-code-of-ethics-for-li...

The site makes the common mistake of blacking out portions of addresses on their pictures of postcards and envelopes, not realizing that leaving the barcode visible is usually sufficient to pinpoint the address, per https://youtu.be/1bmK3dQQ4Us?si=GK8P8dFL3PLUWuI9

I love this.

As someone who buys a lot of books I've often wondered about the previous owners. Sometimes you get a glimpse of them when you find a book with their names written on it.

Recently I've been gathering a collection of first edition/first print Goosebumps books and unsurprisingly they're a lot more likely to have markings on them than your average book (being targeted at 4th grade students).

One night I searched the internet for a few of the full names I found in the books just to see where the owners were today.

One of the first I turned up was an obituary for a woman that had died two years ago. It said she had a lifelong love of reading.

This could itself be the beginning of a Goosebumps story.

I am mid-thirties and purchased all the Goosebump books on my Kindle. I still love them. But, nothing beats those original covers!

I picked up a copy of Old Mr Bostons cocktail guide that was printed in the sixties. From a note written in the front, it was clear that the book was a gift to a son for high school graduation.

Times sure were different then.

The most interesting thing I found in/on a (Glasgow, 1970s) library book was its dustjacket, the back of which was part of a map of England, with annotations in German, presumably bombing targets and landmarks for Luftwaffe pilots.

Found in a Library Book - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538288 - Aug 2022 (1 comment)

That 1 comment is worth it because it points to:

What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32334552 - Aug 2022 (467 comments)

I used to leave little cards with a line describing why I liked a given book and my email address. I never received a reply though.

I find it interesting that 2 of 3 comments mention the word "love" because I was going to post "I love this so much!". There's something magical about such found objects, and is a big reason I still have a huge, unweildy physical library of books. They remember things that digital copies don't. Plus I have this weird thing where I can remember which side of a book something was on, which cuts the search time in half! I daresay that we'll see this digital everything always on screen era as a fad, like the era where everyone smoked.

Borrowed a British military history book from an Australian library and a prior reader had very carefully marked several places about Churchill and Gallipoli with red underling and sidebar editorial "bastard! Liar! Crap reasons" type comments.

I made sure the librarian knew I hadn't made the annotations when I handed it back in.

When I was in school, I used to get textbooks on cassette tape from Recording for the Blind and Dislexic, RFBD. They came in these big boxes full of tapes. I occasionally used those boxes to hide random stuff. Long story short: I might have accidentally left a marijuana pipe in one of them. It was a good brass pipe. If I did, I hope it gave someone lots of joy.

I once created a website to catalog all of the out of copyright books in the Library of Congress and randomized selections so one could replicate the serendipity of browsing (locserendipity.com). In the process of doing this, Jessamyn West identified stickers or stamps on some of the books (https://twitter.com/jessamyn/status/1114333025716854784). Some of the staff at the LOC knew what they were—-stamps marking which books to take offsite in the the unlikely event the Nazis invaded the United States.

I use to work in a library in Howard County, MD back in high school. While shelving books I'd find all kinds of stuff, including many things from people working for defense contractors and NSA... with URLs and logins/passwords I should probably not have had.

I just shredded those as I came upon them lol (didn't let curiosity get the worse of me...)

Hey that's my wife's project.

My sister found a $100 bill in a book from Goodwill

I've always loved looking at books and bags in thrift stores for that kind of stuff.

Nice, tax dollars at work building sites that were never asked for.

There has never been a tax expenditure, in the history of political mankind, that everyone agreed was "asked for".

Hi! I'm a tax payer in the city of Oakland. I love this, and would like more!

So there, now someone's asked for it.

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