Libraries | Funny omissions in borrowed books

Library documents contain beautiful stories or knowledge, but also, on occasion, the little secrets of certain subscribers, who sometimes return them with a supplement of their own, misplaced between the pages or in the boxes. Sweet words, money, food, condoms: the employees recovering the books, who make these sometimes amazing daily finds (yes, drugs too), entrust us with the pearls of these little oversights.

Sylvain Sarrazin
The Press

A recent article from washington post presented an Oakland librarian posting on Instagram her collection of discoveries drawn from books returned by users, between children’s drawings and tender words. The question quickly arose: do we find such candy-flavoured oversights in our Quebec libraries? We asked it to the employees of the Grande Bibliothèque, in Montreal, and the libraries of the City of Quebec, and although the answer has its share of sweetness, it also has its share of spice.

Thus, in the sorting rooms, as soon as the documents arrive on the conveyor belt, the personnel often have a flea in their ears. “Generally, we see that something goes beyond the books,” says Sophie Burelle, clerk at the Grande Bibliothèque which, over the past dozen years, has seen tens of thousands of documents pass. At the back of the room, we see a bulletin board where some of the latest finds are pinned: beautifully executed adult drawings, a head of Garfield, a postcard from Europe… Others fail in tray 23, that of found objects; that day, an abandoned lottery ticket and a book that did not belong to the library (they sometimes mistakenly get mixed up with returned works) awaited their fate.

Each week, 25,000 to 50,000 documents are returned to the institution; it is therefore hardly surprising that some of them return with a small supplement – ​​between 5 and 10 a day, according to M^me Burelle. “Those without value, such as bills or postcards, are sorted, filed with a number and placed in the lost property basket,” explains the clerk. After 90 days, unclaimed items are donated to organizations, thrown away or recycled. “Those of value, such as a passport or money, are put in a locked drawer and we will try to find the user. »

In this mass, what are the most striking omissions? Sophie Burelle, her colleague Emmanuelle Floriot (administrative communications officer and former clerk) as well as the employees of the libraries of Quebec have concocted a small anthology for us.

The frequent

The classic of the classic? “The square of toilet paper. At least we know where people read! laughs Sophie and Emmanuelle, who see rolls of it scroll by. In second place are bookmarks, some of which can be lovely (M^me Floriot presented us with a nice collection), then, in bulk, postcards, photos, receipts, tickets, invoices, drawings, Post-it notes, pencils…

The two women point out that, even if they have little value, these items are on file and can be claimed by users, which they do not always think to do.

the charming

“My darling choupette…”, begins this magnificent Christmas card recently forgotten in a book. When they get their hands on personal notes, employees sometimes experience all kinds of emotions, from laughter to deference. “It can be moving; when you find a mortuary bookmark, it looks like you’re placing it more gently in the basket. We also see the happiness of the person who finds their forgotten object,” says Sophie Burelle.

Words of love, naughty poems, congratulatory cards… the libraries of Quebec have found a beautiful collection, including forgotten children: a letter exposing a secret plan to play with a friend despite the confinement, a word of apology intended for a mother after a fraternal dispute, a hockey card bearing the image of Carey Price, which made “stars in the eyes” twinkle of the stunned young man who recovered it. Just like those of the user who found an old postcard from the 1980s, more precious than at first sight, because it embodies the memory of a dead friend…

Gourmands

By devouring the books, some sometimes embellish them with a supplement. And the readers of Quebec seem particularly greedy: their librarians have already fished in the pages… a slice of Kraft cheese! But also a whole flattened strawberry, a sachet of herbal tea, a soft crushed bar…

In Montreal, we literally saw a sandwich and a can arrive on the conveyor of returned documents. Sometimes, forgettings have another taste, that of travel in space and time: plane tickets, particularly to Europe, old metro connecting tickets, transport tickets from all over the world…

hair-raisers

The best for last, some librarians having a reservoir of anecdotes stamped with sex, drugs and…money! Emmanuelle Floriot recounts having already found, in a DVD case, not the borrowed disc, but a pornographic film probably taken from the subscriber’s personal collection. The story does not say if he came to retrieve it…

In the same category, in Quebec, employees unearthed condoms (sometimes used, yuck!), instructions for using a vibrator or a snapshot of a BDSM couple.

Less sexual, but just as perverse: a note inserted into a thriller, which cruelly revealed the outcome. Boo! Drug ? Also. M^me Floriot got his hands on a sachet of powder, while a subscriber in the capital forgot a ready-to-eat joint in a DVD box.

Money ? Also. Bundles of greenbacks reaching $ 600 have already been found and returned, shaking the employees a little. “It always provokes an ‘oh my God’ reaction when you come across it! “says Sophie Burelle. In Quebec, we also do in the check: we saw big uncashed and in quantity slipped between the pages.

Glaucous? Of course: crushed earwigs, an unwrapped sanitary napkin, a copy of a divorce decree, a fake mustache stuck on a blanket, or even… a misplaced denture! “A book brought back has often trailed in a bag or on a bedside table, in which is inserted an object which was not necessarily intended to be a bookmark”, points out Emmanuelle Floriot, history of elucidating these finds unusual.

Let the little papers do the talking

Do these omissions that make you smile or grimace say something about our inattentive readers? According to Marik Trépanier, Director of Local Libraries and Customer Services at the Bibliothèque de Québec, they prove that they integrate well into our daily lives. “It’s nice to see that people are appropriating books, bringing them to life at home, and that the document is part of their daily lives. It can sometimes cause damage or bad surprises, but it proves that people take advantage of the documents and use them, ”says the one who greatly prefers bookmarks, even incongruous, to folded page corners and annotations.

These small fragments also create a meta-history of the work, superimposing the one it contains. “It tells the destination of the books, where they were read, where the book traveled. The beautifully colored leaf inserted between the pages can evoke the pleasant walk in a park in autumn. Some bookmarks may be postcards returned from Greece. It serves us as a trip! », says Sophie Burelle.