Blog Post 4

 

In the second week of my senior project, I continued to open and price new boxes of books every day, but I also worked on a variety of other projects and learned more interesting things about the store. While sorting and placing books back on the shelves in Lit Arts, I found a book that had a note tucked in the cover. The note was written to someone with an illegible name, and it was basically a birthday card. It was also from 1937, and the paper was crumbling. This was quite an interesting find, and I could not believe that no one had taken out this piece of paper in the past 84 years. I found out, however, 1937 actually is not old at all in the context of Loganberry’s inventory. The Sanctuary is a room towards the back of the store where especially old and valuable books and boxed sets are stored. Loganberry specializes in cultivating a collection of vintage and first edition picture books, but there are also old plays, classics like the Aeneid and Dicken’s work, and historical volumes (about the history of land in Northeast Ohio, for example). The oldest book in the store is the 1600’s, literally centuries older than the birthday gift from 1937 that I stumbled upon. Loganberry does not simply collect rare and old treasures, but they actually sell them too. One day, a middle-aged man came in and seemed to know what he was looking for. He purchased a nineteen-volume set of plays from 1837. The plays were likely what was being run at theatres in London. The entire set cost nearly $2,500. I was standing at the cash register when he checked out, and when I heard the price, I was quite surprised! Elizabeth explained that the reason why the set is so expensive is not because of its content but because of the beautiful, matching, leather-bound covers. Leather binding on books is very expensive, and it is a delicate craft. I thought that it was very interesting to learn about these old books and how they are sold this week.