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Overdue library book returned more than 110 years later
- _ugfj 5y agoReading this I am a little green with envy about how lucky Americans got (and also a little queasy about how they squandered their luck to be become a failed society but I digress). My birth country has been ravaged by two world wars and then the brief but devastating stalinist era was not kind either. The chances of a random library being open since 1911 is basically nil.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. Instead of stamping the card, the librarian simply put a barcode on the inside cover and scanned that. I felt a little sad that the history of the book is no longer stamped into it anymore. I felt a sense of connection knowing just how many people had read the same book in the past.
- cableshaft 5y agoI agree, I always got a kick out of that. Always interesting to see when someone thought it was interesting enough to check out last.
- Archelaos 5y agoI have had the opposite experience: I once borrowed a more than 100 year old edition of U.S. Grant's autobiography from the university library. There were some pencil notes on the first pages, but I had to cut open the last hundred pages. Apparently, no one has read the book in its entirety in more than a century.
- onemoresoop 5y agoI remember that too. One could infer some useful information from those dates alone. Similarly, it just dawned upon me how useful the dislike counter from youtube was to me, I was drawing some metrics from it that I no longer can. The like counter really has no value without the dislike one IMO.
- lettergram 5y agoYou’d have to look at like vs view ratios. But I agree, the dislike button made that far easier. Unfortunately, the regime didn’t like the button lol
- Talanes 5y agoBut the majority of people aren't hitting anything, so now you're lumping in disinterest in ratings with active dislike.
- anon9001 5y agoI think someone should add a "ratio" field via extension. It'd be a useful addition to https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ which is already modifying the youtube UI.
- JasonCannon 5y agoNow you need to determine if you like the video for what it is, instead of relying on the masses to tell you if you dislike the video. Or, you know, just read the comments.
- Lhiw 5y agoI was using it to determine of I was being unfair in my critique. If nobody else is disliking it maybe my biases are effecting my perception. Not everything is confirmation bias. Some people use social feedback to regulate themselves into not being total weirdos.
- bee_rider 5y agoI have upvoted your comment, but feel the need to inform you that I am, in fact, a total weirdo. So, take that as you will.
- tartoran 5y agoI always determined whether I liked a video for what it was anyway, I never disliked a video if other people disliked it. But for me the like dislike ratio helped avoid scams. I feel that scammers are empowered by having only the like counter display
- iancmceachern 5y agoI once bought a used book for a family member for their birthday. It turned out to be an old library book and the card within was stamped with the last date the book was checked out, which was on their birth date, down to even the correct year.
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- thechao 5y agoWithout naming a place, a friend of mine checked out a copy of the parliamentary proceedings (from the UK) of the House of Lords from the early 19th c. They were the only one to have ever checked any of these books out. Mostly boring, but the HoL could get up to funny stuff when they were bored or irritating each other. My only gripe was that they highlighted their favorite bits in yellow. I mean — come on! Their counterargument was that, in the year 2150, when the next person checks out the proceedings, they'd know where the good parts were.
- papandada 5y agoThat's also why on the bus I turn my music up really loud for the good songs
- dingusbingus 5y agoAs a non-native english speaker this post confuses me a lot, did the HoL highlight their own favourite bits? Was it a group of friends that checked out the proceedings?
- judge2020 5y agoIt's a bit confusing (this is commonly called playing the pronoun game, where pronouns are used without context on what they're referring to), but they mean that their friend is the one highlighting good parts in the book.
- tunesmith 5y agoI've never heard "the pronoun game" but I know I have a habit of over-writing to avoid it. (Or maybe I'm writing just enough.)
- tzs 5y agoOT: this is completely off topic, but I'd kind of like to see an effort to take advantage of the current reexamination that is taking place in some circles over the issue of gendered pronouns to just fix the whole damn pronoun system. We need a set of pronouns, which I'll call P1, P2, P3, ... for now to avoid having to think of names for them, that are based on position. P1 refers to the first thing in the sentence that could be referred to by a pronoun, P2 refers to the second thing in the sentence that could be referred to by a pronoun, and so on. We also might need a set of pronouns N1, N2, ... that refer to the last thing before the sentence that could take a pronoun, the next to last thing before the sentence that can take a pronoun, and so on.
- Causality1 5y agoMany of the books in my library came from used library book sales, especially those I read as a child. When I read them again I always look at the checkout dates and wonder about those people, whether the book had the same impact on their lives it had on mine decades later.
- userbinator 5y agoI've "borrowed" books from archive.org that had their last borrower's date in the late 19th/early 20th century, similarly visible from the log affixed inside the cover --- which the archive.org scanners clearly preserved. When I come across such a book I also ponder who the last borrower was.
- tzs 5y agoDid they just stamp the dates or did they also stamp names? The library system were I grew up stamped both. The library cards had your name and library card number in raised reversed lettering. When you checked out a book the librarian took the card from the book and your library card and put it in a device that used the raise lettering to print your name and card number on the card from the book. The newly stamped card got filed away somewhere, and they put a card in the book that had the due date stamped on it. When the book's card got filled up with checkouts on both sides, they'd replace it with a new card.
- lambertsimnel 5y agoMaybe stamping names has fallen out of fashion for data protection reasons. I seem to recall disquiet about the US federal government's access to library records under the George W Bush administration. Maybe some people would be similarly unhappy with their fellow library users knowing which books they'd borrowed. On a similar note, my university used to operate an alumni directory (open to all alumni), and the local paper used to publish the names of all graduates. Both were stopped without any stated reason, but I wonder whether they were judged to violate data protection law or implicated in harassment.
- tzs 5y agoIt's almost certainly due to data protection. That was much less of a concern before the end of the last century, because access to public records was generally much more work than it is now. Records were usually either only on paper or if on computer that computer was only accessible to staff. In the case of my county's library system if someone wanted my checkout history they would have to send someone to the library and go through all the books on the shelves looking at the checkout cards to see if my name and library card number were there. Generally no one would be that interested in most of us. Unless they had a strong reason to specifically be interested in me it was not worth the effort, and generally if I was doing something that would likely cause someone to take such a strong interest I'd know it and could avoid doing things that left those records. Nowadays, with public records on networked computers accessible via the internet, indexed and cross referenced and archived for eternity, so that anyone who has even a fleeting interest for any random reason in you can quickly and easily find it all, you have to operate as if everyone you draw even the slightest attention from might look everything up. Another example would be newspapers. As far as I know my name and photo have been published in newspapers twice. It is remotely possible that the second time could be found via an online search, but I'm pretty sure the first time could only now be found by going to the newspaper in question and going through their old microfiche archives in person. Neither of these were for bad things, but suppose that first time was something bad. It only made the local news, so all I'd have to do is move somewhere else and I could have a fresh start. Maybe I would have to avoid jobs that require a stringent enough background check to send investigators to scour the newspaper archives of every past place I've lived, but aside from that my mistake could stay in my past. Nowadays your past mistakes if they get into the public record can follow you for the rest of your life unless you do a complete identity change. So now we have to be very careful to make sure nothing that might be seen as mistake (by today's standards or any future standards over the rest of your life!) gets into the record in the first place.
- sohkamyung 5y agoSimilarly, passports are also now mostly scanned at immigration and not stamped any more. I wonder if people feel a similar loss at being unable to connect to foreign places they may have once visited.
- Denvercoder9 5y agoIn most countries the immigration officer will still stamp your passport if you request it.
- goodcanadian 5y agoThat is an interesting statement because I am not sure I recall any country recently that did not stamp my passport. I guess it is not stamped if and where you are able to use the automated kiosks, but that is generally only my own country and perhaps a couple of others.
- sohkamyung 5y agoSingapore does not stamp passports upon exit, for example [2]. Here's a list from 2017 of other countries that don't stamp passports upon entry [1]. [1] https://travelupdate.com/countries-do-not-issue-a-passport-stamp-upon-entry/ https://travelupdate.com/countries-do-not-issue-a-passport-s... [2] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/passport-stamps-no-longer-needed-to-exit-singapore https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/passport-stamps-no-lo...
- lordnacho 5y agoWhat also happened back in the day was you'd get a history of your school in the back pages of the library books. You'd see names of people a year or two above that you might know, then their elder siblings, then names that might have left some art in the halls, or they are on a leavers' wall from a long time ago.
- dotancohen 5y ago> I once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. I suppose the modern version would be to see three or even four digits at the end of a hit counter on a webpage, but I haven't even seen a hitcounter in maybe two decades.
- dotancohen 5y agoOn reflection, I've got a better modern analogy. I filed KDE bug number 200000: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200000 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200000
- chmod775 5y ago> “I don’t think anybody here has seen a book” that’s been away for so long, she said. Those quotes gave me a laughing fit.
- linuxlizard 5y agoNice to see my home state/town making cute national news for a change (as opposed to our usual cringe-worthy coverage).
- artificialLimbs 5y agoWill it now be named "The Old Chronicles of Rebecca"?
- kleer001 5y agoOh gosh, I wonder what the literal and naive fine would have been. I too would have returned in anonymously.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThey mention the fine based on when the book was checked out would be over $800, but under current rules would be capped at price of acquisition of the book or $1.50.
- pavon 5y agoActually the article says late fees were eliminated entirely in 2019. I wonder if news surrounding that factored into the book being returned, or if it was just coincidence.
- panda88888 5y agoI assume the price is not inflation adjusted?
- boomboomsubban 5y agoBoth are the current amount they would pay based on the late fee systems. So no?
- OJFord 5y agoThat's a somewhat naïvely correct cap, seems to me it should be higher, to impose a bit of a penalty and discourage 'try before you buy'. Also is that acquisition cost the same as it is to the borrower anyway?
- boomboomsubban 5y agoDoubt it, $1.50 then would be around $40.
- wumpus 5y agoPeople who've studied whether public libraries should have fines at all appear to mostly conclude that no, they shouldn't, because it causes poor people to avoid checking out books. That's why libraries have gradually switched from fines to fines forgiven to not having fines at all. Blockbuster used to make all of their profits from late fees. Public libraries have a purpose of encouraging reading.
- sydthrowaway 5y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/07/school-library-book-returned-120-years-late-no-fine-hereford https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/07/school-lib...
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- 1024core 5y agoI have a book that my advisor lent me. He had checked it out in the 70s as a grad student from his university library. I'd been meaning to return it in person the next time I'm there, but dang COVID had other plans.
- unnouinceput 5y agoApparently I am in the same league as I returned a book 21 years later. I was an avid book reader and I used to read tons of books from my hometown public library. Then when I started Uni in another town I was home only in week-ends and I switched to technical books to take from said library. Apparently one of those got lost in my personal books when I moved and stayed at the bottom of a box for those 21 years. Meanwhile I got a wife, kids, you know, life happened. So a few years ago (~2017) we moved again and this time I decided I have too much crap in some boxes and wanted to do a cleanup, therefore I took personally by hand each box in my garage. Lo and behold, at the bottom I recognized this book from the library and when I visited my mother in one of usual monthly visits I also took the book back with me. Funny enough, the same librarian lady was still there as last time I saw her when I was a student, very near to her retirement. I explained the situation and apologized, returned the book and she laughed off. No late fees, though the said library does still had late fees and would've been quite the sum (a little bit more than my monthly salary). The book in question was an electronics catalog dating from middle of 90's, mainly about diodes and thyristors.
- asddubs 5y agothe real question is: would you have paid the late fees?
- unnouinceput 5y agoNo. It was a honest mistake and I wasn't aware that I had the book. Their system didn't functioned properly to warn me about it so I would've won in front of the judge.
- ars 5y ago> The book in question was an electronics catalog dating from middle of 90's, mainly about diodes and thyristors. It's certainly the honest thing to do to return it (is you library account still valid?) But I highly doubt they need that book anymore, it's basically the same as trashing it, but with extra steps.
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- westcort 5y agoI guess once it was available on Project Gutenberg (https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1375/pg1375-images.html https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1375/pg1375-images.html) they didn’t need the print copy anymore.
- westcort 5y agoWow, Kate Douglas Wiggin wrote a lot of books! https://www.locserendipity.com/TitleSearch.html?q=Kate%20Douglas%20Wiggin https://www.locserendipity.com/TitleSearch.html?q=Kate%20Dou... (fair warning, this search engine loads the entire index, so uses several MB before it loads—-no worse than a high resolution photo of the moon, but I don’t want to eat someone’s limited mobile data).
- em3rgent0rdr 5y agoreminds me of that Seinfield episode "The Library" where Jerry receives a $50,000 fine due to an overdue book for a nickel a day for 20 years.
- nsonha 5y agothis reminds me of that Seinfeld episode, if you look up Mr Bookman on Youtube, it's incredibly funny
- dcminter 5y agoWhen my late father died a few years ago I found several books from his school library during the clearout. Probably "only" about half the tally of the book in the article. I returned them to the school with a note asking them to overlook any "trifling late fees" and got a very nice letter back asking for a few details of him for the school magazine. I don't know if he kept them intentionally or not, but I do have a scales weight on my desk serving as a paperweight that he told me he stole from his first job at a bank. It's for weighing 100 sovereigns (gold coins). I think of him every time I notice it.
- pepoluan 5y agoI think the book was returned anonymously because the last borrower was afraid they will be hit by an astronomical late fee...
- iechoz6H 5y agoNice story; apparently doesn't quite trump the latest returned book which was around 300 years overdue [1] for an ecclesiastical book borrowed from Sheffield Cathedral library since defunct. 1. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/book-returned-to-library-was-300-years-overdue/ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/boo...
- FullyFunctional 5y agoMeta comment: this is a instance of where the NH comments are more interesting than the original article. I was reminiscing about how much time I used to spend at the library as a child and how my children are missing out on that.