George Stewart was sifting through old boxes neglected for decades at Alabama's state archives when he found 1611 edition of the famed Geneva Bible:
The Bible, unboxed earlier this year, is now in one of the archives vaults, but people at least know it exists and where they can find it.
Many other books still sit boxed and uncataloged, though Stewart said he's taken quick glimpses through the boxes and has a general idea of what's in them.
Stewart, 59, retired director of the Birmingham Public Library, figures that as many as 10,000 books sat in boxes since probably the 1940s or 1950s before he started opening boxes three years ago. Nobody put them on shelves or listed them in a card catalog or computer record. They just sat.
"It is a treasure that was neglected. It's not anybody's fault. It's just that they (archives officials) never had money to have the staff to do it," Stewart said.
Of course 1611 was also the year that the King James translation was released.
Hmmm. I wonder if I looked through all my book boxes if I'd find something like that...
No comments:
Post a Comment