It’s 1972, downtown Milwaukee. “American Pie” burns up the airwaves. Paranoia threatens to destroy Richard Nixon. Coach Al McGuire is building a champion team at Marquette. And in the stacks of the university’s library, an unnamed student finds a book called Medical Implications of Karate Blows.
Inside it, a series of photographs demonstrate different karate moves while accompanying medical drawings details the potential damage each could inflict. Shattered femur? Page 102. Pulverized eyeball? Check page 33.
The student checks the book out. The loan period is four weeks. Keeping the book out any longer will result in an overdue fine. An extra week will cost the borrower 70 cents, a month late will run three bucks … well, how about a half-century?
In March, a package arrived in the Technical Services department at Marquette’s Raynor Library. The postmark was from California. No full name was given. A handwritten note on the package apologized for failing to return the book on time. “[This book] is timeless,” the note said. “So, it still has value.” Inside was Medical Implications of Karate Blows, 53 years overdue.
Having a book returned by mail is not uncommon, says Elisabeth Kaune, head of cataloging and metadata at Raynor. “Students go back home for the summer and then find a book they forgot to return. It happens.” But after 50-plus years? “Well, that’s not something we see every day.”
Circulation records from this era were long ago lost, says library dean Tara Baillargeon. But the loss of this title did not go unnoticed. Proof of that lies on the sixth floor of Raynor’s stacks, where the copy that replaced the missing book can still be found.
“Clearly another librarian thought this book was important enough to replace when it went missing,” says Annie Lipski, a health sciences librarian at Marquette. “It covers unique subject matter and includes detailed medical illustrations. The patron was right, this information is timeless.”
A dime a day for 53 years runs nearly $2,000. Of course, library policy of the time states that after two months, a book was officially declared lost, and the patron was only to be billed for the item’s list price plus a $5 processing charge. So, will the library try to collect on this $11 fine? “No, we will not try to collect any fines,” Baillargeon says. “We’re just thrilled to see the book again.”
And what of the fate of the newly returned item? “I think we’ll hang on to the returned book for now,” Lipski says. “Just in case our current copy goes missing.”
