UPI reports: Shaunna Raycraft is lost in a mountain of books. (CBC)What began as a book rescue mission has become a literary nightmare for a Pike Lake, Sask., woman.
Shaunna Raycraft took over a collection of 350,000 books when a neighbour threatened to burn them after her collector husband passed away.
But now Raycraft and her own husband don’t know what to do with all the books and are forced to contemplate burning some books themselves.
Raycraft said she was amazed when she first set eyes on the massive collection kept by their neighbours on a nearby acreage. “There was a house floor-to-ceiling with books,” said Raycraft. “He was the collector; she had tried to get someone to appraise the books but they wouldn’t come out [to the rural setting].”
“She didn’t know how to deal with them so she started to burn them,” Raycraft explained. But the Raycrafts are book lovers and couldn’t stand the sight of them being destroyed. Some of the books appear to be old and quite rare. “There was a first edition copy of Black Beauty on the top pile and the bottom was all charred off [from being burned] but the top was just immaculate,” she said.
What to do?? Ideas anyone?
Typo!
You’ve spelled Saskatchewan incorrectly…you’re missing the letter “t”.
“Saskatchewan”
Has an invisible T, it’s not just silent
okay okay!!
I stand corrected. Thank you dear editors.
No ideas about where to put/send the books?
Sell them, of course.
Hire a couple of college kids to work through the books and list them on book-selling web sites. With a bar-code reader and a pen-scanner (for books without UPC codes) and something like http://www.librarything.com one could work through a large chunk of them before September. If there is no rush then Shaunna and the former owner could do it themselves. Even if they only made $1.00 per book, that would be $350,000. Don’t try to organize the books first. That would be a waste of time. Just give each book a serial number when you list it and put that number in your listing. Keep a spreadsheet, or just a log-book of which stack each book is in. When that book sells, it will be a relatively easy matter to scan through that stack and find the correct book. Don’t forget to double-check the serial number previously written on the inside of the cover to make sure there aren’t any mistakes. Package the book up in one of those wrap-around cardboard book packages, then let UPS come out once a week or once a day, depending on how many are selling, and haul the load off.
Shoot, I wish I had their problem.