Library leavings

It’s easy to forget things at the library — your card, the book you wanted, normal things like that. But this is just a little bit different:

When
Michele Anderson started to pull a mystery novel off the shelf Tuesday
at Armstrong Library, she noticed a bulge under the dust jacket. And
with her background in library work she had to check it out.

"I
felt something in there, and from my time working here (Anderson worked
cataloguing books at the library in the late ’80s and early ’90s) I
just had to straighten it out and felt in there and pulled it out,"
Anderson said. "I thought, ‘Whoa. Wait a minute,’ and I took it to the
librarian downstairs."

“It” was a substantial sum of money, and

Anderson and Susan Cassagne, the library’s director, are trying to

identify the money’s rightful owner so they can return it.

"We want to make an effort to find whose money it is so we can give it back," Cassagne said.

Cassagne

asked that details, such as the amount of money and the title of the

book it was found in, not be included in this story so that she can

identify the money’s rightful owner. Anyone who thinks they may have

left money in a book they checked out more than a year ago can contact

the library.

Unfortunately, because the library switched to a new system and tried to ward off the Patriot Act, they have no record of who the money belongs to. And what if no one claims it?

As if all that

weren’t complicated enough, there’s the matter of what to do with the

money if it isn’t claimed. Cassagne found an opinion from the

Mississippi Attorney General’s office about a similar case.

In

that case, money was found in a paperback on an exchange table, where

patrons were invited to leave old books and pick up any they wanted.

But since those books were not the property of the library, the opinion

found the money wasn’t either and one lucky patron got $1,100 out of

the deal.

Cassagne said she believes if the money is not claimed

it is the property of the library, though she said she would like to

thank Anderson in some form.

Cassagne said this isn’t the most unusual thing she’s found in a library book.

“I found a spaghetti noodle once,” Cassagne said. “We find a lot of love letters, pictures, that sort of thing.”