The overdue library book in 1919 was to be returned on February 13 of that year. Troops were still returning from World War I. America had its 28th president. Gold sold for $20 an ounce. And people still read books.
In 2024, after 105 years, the overdue library book was finally returned. Now we have the internet and smartphones. Our 46th president is in office. This month, gold topped $2,300 an ounce. And people still read books.
After so long, staff at the public library in Fort Collins, Colorado, were eager to share the news of the book’s return. But they saved the shocking story for a special occasion.
“Clearly, somebody had enjoyed the book. There were annotations in it and looked like it had been well-loved,” communications director for Poudre Libraries Katie Auman told The Epoch Times.
“We were actually thrilled that the book even came back to us because we don’t expect books to return that many years later,” she said. “To be able to sort of see it and know that it had been well used, was really kind of special.”
The title of the old overdue volume is “Ivanhoe: A Romance” by Sir Walter Scott, a classic novel set in 12th-century England featuring the heroics of the knight Sir Wilfred, who wins the hand of the beautiful Lady Rowena.
Looking fragile today, the bound copy was received by the public library from a distant relative of the borrower. It won’t be placed back into circulation after being on loan for over a century, though there are newer copies still available.
The only clue as to who the borrower might have been was revealed by the library on its website, noting that the sister of one Mary Weiss found the book in their father’s belongings in Colorado Springs; and they suspected it was in the possession of a great-aunt or -uncle who checked the book out decades earlier.
Stamps on the now antiquated due date slip inside the back cover show that it had been rather new, only borrowed three times before it went missing. We may never know why the book wasn’t returned on time—or decades afterward—or whether they were worried about racking up the library late charges some of us still remember.
A label inside the front cover spelled out the rules and the costs of being tardy in returning a loaned item: “A fine of two cents per day shall be collected on all books. If a messenger be sent for a detained book an additional charge of 25 cents shall be collected.”
“When we figured out that it was over 38,000 days overdue, that would have been about $760,” Ms. Auman told the newspaper. “That 2 cents a day, if you brought it to today’s, you know, inflation costs, you’re looking at over $10,000.”
The library did a more accurate tabulation and rang in the total late fees to the tune of $14,000.
“Fortunately, we do not charge overdue fees anymore. Otherwise, this could have been a very big bill,” Ms. Auman said. “There’s no way a library would charge anybody that of course, but it is kind of a staggering number.”
Although the book was returned in February—105 years late, almost to the day—the public announcement was saved for National Library Week in April.
“Our public library system was founded basically [in] the late 1800s and then became an actual public library and reading room. And now, we’re such a bigger system,” Ms. Auman said. “So it was really just sort of a fun, historical reminder to people of where we’ve come.”
