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Dave Obee: An old book’s journey adds to its value

My librarian friends are going to hate me for writing this column. But so be it. Fans of Dame Nellie Melba, the great operatic soprano, will appreciate it, as will fans of Cornell University, the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York.

Dave ObeeMy librarian friends are going to hate me for writing this column. But so be it.

Fans of Dame Nellie Melba, the great operatic soprano, will appreciate it, as will fans of Cornell University, the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York. I am sure that the local founders of the Abebooks website will appreciate the nod as well.

And now, with the background out of the way, I will try to tie everything together.

I have a deep interest in local history, and in October I will be giving a presentation on local-history research at a conference in Brisbane, Australia. I really needed an example with connections to both Brisbane and Greater Victoria, and Melba fit the bill.

She and Charles Armstrong were married in Brisbane, but theirs was not a happy union. They split soon after their son was born.

She went on to great global fame, and he lived out his final decades in Shawnigan Lake.

Charles was a member of the Union Club, and by the time he died in 1948, he had many friends throughout this area. That information comes from a book about Melba that was written in 1968 by John Hetherington.

But how did the author obtain that information in the first place, you ask? In 1965, he wrote to the Daily Colonist, asking us to publish a short note saying that he was looking for people who had known Armstrong. Many people responded to his request.

I stumbled upon the Hetherington book at the University of Victoria’s McPherson Library. I had gone there to look at Melba’s autobiography, and found the Hetherington book beside it. (Funny thing about libraries. When you find your book, there is a good chance the books on either side might be of interest, as well.)

I realized the Hetherington book was excellent, much better than Melba’s own, and I wanted my own copy. I checked abebooks.com and found one for a good price. Ex-library, it said, with “some library markings.”

Always a gamble when you see that. It might mean the book is from an irrelevant little library somewhere, or it might turn out to be a gem.

When the book arrived, I was almost like a child unwrapping a Christmas present. What would I get?

Cornell University Library! It was a book from a genuine Ivy League university! Discarded by Cornell, true, but still from Cornell.

The stamps in the back show the book had been taken out precisely three times, once in the 1970s and twice in the 1980s. Despite that apparent surge in interest, the library let the gem go. So I got it for a song — a nice addition to my collection, with a great book plate as a bonus.

Libraries mark their books to ensure that books are returned as they should be, and those markings usually reduce the resale value. I love them, since they show our connection with libraries all around the world, and give a hint of the book’s travels.

Jordan Minter of Russell Books on Fort Street, arguably the largest used-book store in Canada, tells me that an ex-library book is usually worth half as much as the same book without the library markings.

He says he is cautious about taking books from libraries. If it was a discard, that means there was no interest in the book, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to stock it.

Sometimes, however, library markings help. The other day, Russell’s had a copy of Crabb’s English Synonymes, published in 1879 and from the collection of the Historical and Scientific Society Public Library. The city was not indicated, but there was a society of that name in Winnipeg in the late 19th century, before the regular public library was established.

The book was a bargain at $7.99. Without the markings, I’d be willing to pay about $8 less than that.

I told Minter of my interest in ex-library books. About a second later, he came up with a discard from the Victoria Medical Society Library. Its title? The Subnormal Mind.

Well, OK. Just remember, though, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Sometimes, it’s nice to know where it’s been.

Dave Obee, the editor-in-chief of the Times Colonist, is the author of The Library Book, a history of library service in British Columbia.

dobee@timescolonist.com