A library in Massachusetts got a pleasant surprise when a 19th-century book overdue by more than 100 years was returned.
“It’s never too late to return a library book,” said New Bedford Free Public Library Director Olivia Melo. That’s the message she hopes the public will get when they hear about how, in early June, a book last marked due back to the library by Dec. 10, 1903, finally found its way back to New Bedford.
The library typically has a 5-cent-per-day late fee, meaning a 119-year-late book would have had to pay over $2,100 in fines when it was returned. Luckily, the library’s late fee limit is $2.
According to Melo and special collections librarian Jodi Goodman, the book, titled “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity,” published in 1882, was found at West Virginia University among a private collection after it had been donated to the school. Discovering the New Bedford library slip under its cover, staff there reached out to the New Bedford library to see if there was interest in having it returned.
Goodman said the tome, by author James Clerk Maxwell, appears to be instructional/informative in nature, written during a time when electricity was in its early stages of being introduced for home use.
“It was a huge deal; emerging electricity was going to change everything,” she said, noting the publication’s timing three years after the first incandescent lightbulb had been patented by Thomas Edison. “So I think when this material was being published it was really cutting-edge.”
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A researcher by nature, Goodman also dug deeper to learn some things about Maxwell.
“He was British, a professor of experimental physics, an honorary fellow with a ton of degrees, but he died in November of 1879 before this was published,” she said, noting most of the material was originally written around 1874. “I found this piece interesting: it was the editor, William…
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