Some Books Seem to Fall
Under a Vanishing Spell
by David Loftus
[This feature appeared in the Oregonian,
January 27, 2000.]
"I was once sitting home in my house and a lot of cars pulled up around the house, and they shined in searchlights. And I heard a voice over a loudspeaker say: 'We have your house surrounded. This is the New York Public Library.' They wanted the books back, you know." -- Woody Allen
Ever wonder what it means when the library's electronic catalog says the book you're after is "lost"?
It could mean several things.
Indeed, libraries nationwide lose books to theft, but they also take books out of circulation because they are outdated or worn out. Nationally and locally, librarians say they lose about 5 percent of their collections per year. And some subjects seem harder to keep on the shelves than others.
"Anything that's about spells, Wiccan religion, paganism, or astrology walks off pretty quickly and regularly," says Jane Salisbury, a materials selector at the Multnomah County Central Library.
Every year the county replaces 15 to 20 copies of Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible and Gerina Dunwich's Candlelight Spells: The Modern Witch's Book of Spellcasting, Feasting and Natural Healing. Although 30 copies of the Dunwich book are listed in the library's database, more than three-quarters of them are gone.
"There certainly is interest in all of that," agrees Colleen Winters, director of the Forest Grove City Library, "but I have no idea whether people are trying to do the stuff or just reading."
Cindy Gibbon, Multnomah County Central Library branch director, thinks that enemies of the supernatural may be just as responsible for the disappearance of those books as fans.
"There are people who will take a book off the shelf and spirit it away so that nobody else can read it," Gibbon says. "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to occur to them that the book can be replaced."
"In general we feel obligated to replace them," Salisbury adds.
Books about true crime and serial killers also tend to vanish. Multnomah County ordered 33 copies of Ann Rule's 1999 book, The End of the Dream, and in about six months one-third of them became history. Twenty copies of five different books about serial killer Ted Bundy also are lost.
Although the threat of canceled library privileges often gets books returned, Hillsboro, Forest Grove, and Multnomah County have turned to a collection agency to track down errant volumes of great number or value.
"We consider it a theft of property," says Ginnie Cooper, Multnomah County Library director.
The Multnomah County Library typically pays the agency a percentage of the fines collected or of the value of the retrieved book.
Currently, the county system circulates 10 million items a year, or more than 800,000 a month.
During one month last fall, for example, the county estimated it had lost roughly 2,000 books -- worth an estimated $58,000 -- but recovered almost that many.
"It looks like we're getting back most of our material, which is the real goal," Gibbon says.
Sometimes "lost" simply means mis-shelved.
During a library-wide cleanup last summer, Tigard Public Library's circulation manager Paula Walker says, library employees found potty-training books lodged near careers and education.
"I think there are a lot of parents who can relate to that," Walker commented.
Sometimes patrons insist vehemently that they have returned the book in question. Forest Grove politely reclassifies the book's status as "claims returned," but, says Winters, "I love to tell the stories of how many of those come back."
One angry woman lectured Winters' staff members on how they should get their act together. Later, "She graciously came in and apologized with book in hand," explaining that her granddaughter had put it in a cupboard with the pots and pans.
"We go into this litany with people," reports Shirley George, a librarian with the Beaverton City Library. "Have you looked behind the couch, under the cushions, under the bed, under the car seat?"
One couple who stormed in to insist they had returned the book heard the litany, looked at each other, went out to the car, and came back with the book, George recalls.
Walker remembers a couple who bought a house in Tigard and came in with a pile of books from the attic that turned out to be 23 years overdue.
Any book that makes it back to please other patrons is most welcome. Even if it returns -- as Gibbon says one did -- with a strip of cooked bacon for a bookmark.