Secret lives of bookmarks

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This article was published 17/06/2023 (836 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Found in a Library Book is an online database wholly dedicated to items people forgetfully leave between the pages of borrowed material.

The website was created by Sharon McKellar, a librarian in Oakland, Calif., who became intrigued by the number of wedding portraits, breakup letters and uncashed winning lottery tickets she and her co-workers were turning up as they flipped through books and periodicals upon their return.

“You can look at an object, whether it’s a photo or a scrap of paper, and think… why and how it got here… what their stories are… and that’s kind of the fun,” McKellar said, in a 2022 interview with the Washington Post.

Closer to home, Heather Emberley, a volunteer for the Children’s Hospital Book Market, says California bookworms have nothing on their Manitoba counterparts when it comes to marking the end of a chapter with everything under the sun.

“Yes, I am familiar with Found in a Library Book. But does it compare with what we’ve discovered? No, no, no,” Emberley says, seated inside the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg, 603 Wellington Cres.

As part of Doors Open Winnipeg, the church recently hosted a well-received exhibit of ephemera Emberley and her fellow volunteers have found hidden in the pages of donated material.

The mind-boggling assortment includes paper currency from more than a dozen countries, unused boarding passes, marriage licences, 80-year-old Christmas cards… even a hand-written recipe for — will that be one hump or two? — camel stew.

“Canadian mystery writer Louise Penny once said that people put things in books for two reasons: to keep them or to hide them,” she continues. “That’s probably true, except I would add people who, when the doorbell rings, reach for the first thing on a table beside them, stick it in what they’re reading and later neglect to remove it.”

Emberley began volunteering for the Children’s Hospital book sale in 2018. Books with torn, stained or missing pages are tough sells, so she was instructed to meticulously go through donations to separate the wheat from the chaff.

One afternoon, she happened upon a perfectly preserved, black-and-white photograph of a newborn, tucked inside a hardcover novel. Her first thought was: Isn’t that cute? Her second thought was: What should I do with it?

She was told that ever since the market’s inception in 1961, items such as what she was clutching in her hand were regretfully tossed in the trash or, if possible, recycled. That seemed perfectly acceptable for a grocery bill or parking receipt, she thought, but not a baby picture.

“A few of us started talking amongst ourselves, and we ultimately came to an agreement that we shouldn’t be throwing those sorts of things away, but should hold onto them, just in case somebody asked about them down the road,” Emberley says.

(Because donations are dropped off anonymously at fire halls across the city, it’s next to impossible to reunite what’s found with its rightful owner.)

Starting in 2019, anything deemed to be of value — monetary or emotional — was placed in boxes to be sorted at a future date. Problem was, they were catching so many objects on an almost daily basis that setting aside time to organize the lot properly proved difficult.

Then along came COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, Emberley transported the majority of what had been found to her Crescentwood home for safekeeping.

With little else to do “while the world was shutting down,” she set about categorizing it: legal documents in one pile, concert ticket stubs in another, sports-related paraphernalia in another, and so on.

When restrictions were relaxed and people were allowed to gather in small groups, she invited a few of the other volunteers over to give her a hand. That was when things really began to take shape, she says, leaning forward in her chair.

Soon enough, a stack labelled “celebrities” was sub-divided into “celebs with autographs,” then “local celebs,” the latter of which included 8x10s of, among others, Winnipeg performers Fred Penner, Al Simmons and Chad Allan.

The idea for the Doors Open show was hatched last winter. No surprise, the toughest part was deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. OK, it was a bit of a no-brainer to include a shot of then-Prince Charles posing with the Spice Girls, a car registration form signed by Elvis Presley and, purely for curiousity’s sake, an intact packet of ketchup, miraculously never split open.

There are a couple of caveats associated with the ongoing project. Everything found remains the property of Children’s Hospital. That means if they land a valuable item that can be sold — as occurred a few months ago with a Nolan Ryan baseball card — any money received for it goes directly into the hospital’s coffers.

Also, to comply with child protection laws, they would never display kids’ grade school pictures if the student were identifiable, she says. When discoveries are deemed to be deeply personal, they are immediately placed in a sealed folder.

“There was one letter we found dated 1948 that was open to interpretation, but appeared to be a suicide note. It wasn’t signed but still, we respected the privacy of whoever it was that wrote it.”

Going forward, Emberley says the goal is to continue sharing their ever-growing trove with the general public. A few senior-living residences have expressed an interest in hosting the display, as have other church groups.

Emberley is contemplating applying for a Canada Council grant to produce a table-top book, again with all proceeds going to the Children’s Hospital.

In the meantime, she will continue to keep her eyes peeled when she’s poring through donations, especially now that her peepers are going to be put to the ultimate test.

“After taking in the show, one fellow said he was planning to put something in a donated book with my name on it, to see how long it takes for it to be found,” she says. “I was like, ‘Fantastic, a treasure hunt.’ Then I thought, ‘Oh great; knowing me, I won’t be able to sleep till we find it.’”

david.sanderson@winnipegfreepress.com