SYDNEY — In the spring of 1939, a young girl checked out a book known as 'The Adventures of Dr. Dolittle' from the Sydney Public Library.
Nearly 82 years later Jordan Musycsyn returned it after finding the piece of famous literature in the attic of his Centre Street home.
“We were putting in a ceiling fan in the bathroom, so we had to vent it out the roof, so we were up there for about a week,” says the well-known Cape Breton musician.
“It’s an unfinished attic so there’s a bunch of blown-in insulation and there was just some books underneath it so I took a couple down and they were really, really old. Some of them had a lot of old stamps from the 1930s on them.
“And this one had a library card from what looked like 1929.”
The book actually dates back well before computers kept track of borrowers and to a pivotal year in world history that saw the beginning of the Second World War led by Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
In 1939 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings also won the Pulitzer Prize for her masterpiece 'The Yearling,' the first televised baseball game was broadcast in the U.S. and Lou Gehrig ended a 2,130 consecutive game streak when the Yankees defeated the Tigers 22-2.
“I shared it online that if the library still had their fines, I was in for a hefty one,” laughed Musycsyn on Wednesday after he returned the overdue book to the Cape Breton Regional Library.
Late fees
The library ended late fees last year but if they had still been in place, someone could have faced a fine of more than $3,000.
However, Nicole MacGibbon, technical services librarian with the Cape Breton Regional Library, says the likelihood of a fine ever being charged for this book was pretty much non-existent.
“If the book was due back in May of 1939, assuming a rate of 15 cents per day (excluding weekends and holidays), the grand total owing in late fees would be around $3,105,” she says. “However, prior to eliminating all late fees, CBRL did not charge fines on items borrowed from the children's collection using a youth membership, which would have been the case for this book. Not to mention, late fees for other materials were capped at a maximum of $3 per book.”
Historical importance
But much more important than potential late fees is the book’s historic importance to the library.
“At the time, the Sydney Public Library was located in the courthouse building on Charlotte St., which had actually burned down in a fire in 1959, destroying about 80,000 books,” she says. “So, it’s actually extra special to receive a book that would have been in the collection from that library since so many of them got destroyed at that time. This is really special.”
MacGibbon also says having a book returned after all this time is truly a rarity.
“I think the oldest one I’ve ever seen was about 10 years old but never anything 82 years.”
Book bonus
Finding books that date so far back into the last century was an interesting bonus for Musycsyn.
“We bought this house about five years ago,” he says. “The house is about 100 years old and the previous owners, it was their family home. The woman who owned it before we bought it had passed away. She must have taken out this book about Dr. Dolittle when she was like a small child so it’s really cool to find something like that.”
For privacy reasons, the name of the borrower isn’t being released until the library receives permission from her next of kin.
While the one library book has been returned, the remaining old books remain in the Musycsyn home where they will soon occupy their own place of pride. And more remain in the attic, to be rediscovered another day.
“I figure I might end up reading them someday - we have a bookshelf with the old books on it.”
