Volunteers sift rotten food and human waste to save books

librarydragon1 sends “this unsavory and upsetting story about an East St. Louis library that was abandoned in 2001, with about 10,000 volumes left behind. Since then, homeless people have been squatting in the building. The current director, Cynthia Jones, didn’t know about the building until someone called and asked if she could get access to some materials for her dissertation. “‘I have never seen such devastation to a library or library materials,’said Jones after walking through the old location for the first time a few weeks ago.” Among the mess are two Ralph Waldo Emerson collections dating to the 1860s and other out-of-print titles. More from the Chicago Sun-Times.”

August 24, 2004 by Uncategorized 1

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1 Response

  1. mdoneil says:
    August 24, 2004 at 7:00 am

    Criminal
    If they neglected city money like they neglected the collection they would be in prison. It amazes me the director never knew that there were 10K items abandoned. It would seem that a self storage place would do just fine for a couple of hundred bucks a month.

    That said I have been through East Saint Louis, Illinois and I will never go there again. I felt safer when I was in Haiti a few months ago and they were having a mini-coup.

    Reply

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