Almost everyone hung on to a library book a little too long, but how many of us can measure this offense for decades?
Robert Murray can, after having kept a beloved copy but borrowed from a book on Woodcraft from the UBC library for 64 years.
The book in question? A 1931 edition of Camping and Woodcraft: a manual for vacation campers and for travelers in the desert, Initially written in 1906.
“I chose this book just by chance when I was in the library one day and I realized that it was gold. So I crossed it and I took it out a second time, and I extended the loan, and I always thought it was gold,” Murray told Global News.
“And I thought that, as it had been removed only once in the past 10 years, I could perhaps keep it a little longer.”
It was May 10, 1960.
The 1934 copy of “Camping and Woodcraft: a handbook for vacation campers and for travelers in the Wilderness” that Robert Murray returned to the Library of the UBC 64 years late.
Global News
Quick advance until January when the UBC librarian, Susan Parker, received a mysterious package by post from an unrecognized address.
Carefully wrapped and with love inside was Camping and Woodcraft, as well as a letter explaining the circumstances.
“He essentially said that he had darked this book even if he borrowed it 64 years ago from the library when he was a UBC student, but he really wants to recover it,” she said.
Get national news
For news that has an impact on Canada and worldwide, register for the safeguarding of news alerts that are delivered to you directly when they occur.
“For him, it was really a continuation of his love for outdoors, and he really wanted to continue to make this kind of life and he just considered the book as a treasure … He said it was a real gold for him and he hopes that it would be the same for others.”
According to Murray, the “gold” of the book has proven to be invaluable more than once.
He described its content as practical information from a person with a real experience of the hinterland, as opposed to the “garbage roughly” found in other books of the time marketed in the first hippies and types of return to land.
He credited information he learned in the volume of having potentially saved his son David’s life during a campsite trip where they were caught in the rain and started to cool off quickly.
“David wanted to put the tent in place, and I say:” No, no good, we simply take the water inside with us and freezes “, so we put a tarpaulin, Lean-to, we had a fire in front, David actually started to shiver and became hypothermic,” he said.
“An hour later, the fire was going happily in front of us, we crazy in our sleeping bags and eating stew.”
Murray said that even if he still thought that the book should possibly be returned, it was an article he read in the newspaper about ten years ago that rolled the ball.
Incredibly, the story was a functionality of someone who had released exactly the same book, Camping and WoodcraftAnd returned it to Prince George’s public library more than 30 years late.
He first told his wife and daughter to give him back the book after his death, but after a fear of health, he decided that he wanted to do it himself.
He also ponted a voluntary fine – however, ironically, the UBC has since stopped loading people for late library books.
“In the envelope was a check for $ 100 because he really had the impression that he should pay a kind of delay, but he sort of calculated what it would be and he thought that the number was too large, so he simply designed to give us a check for $ 100 and hoped that I would say that it would be OK,” Parker told Global News.
“What I of course did.”
After a few minor repairs, he will soon be back on the shelf, joining the more than 8.5 million pounds printed in the UBC collection.
Parker added that Murray had been an “ideal steward” of the book and had returned it in excellent condition.
History, she said, is a good example of the power and value that libraries may have.
“Books are very personal to people, and it is the very ideal story of the book that suits you-that was not part of his studies at the UBC, he was an engineering student, it was part of the interest of his life,” she said.
“This is exactly what a library is, it is to provide you with ways to pursue these interests. It is a life learning journey that he undertook to self-use. ”
That said, Parker urged other books lovers not to try the same thing as Murray.
“If you have a late book, you don’t have to wait so long,” she said.
“We really want the book to come back.”
Murray, meanwhile, has recovered a brand new copy of the book, which remains printed through large booksellers.
& Copy 2025 Global News, A Division of Corus Entertainment Inc.