The Department oeef Rare Books and Special Collections

 by Eva Jurczyk

This is a book written by a Canadian Librarian from Toronto

The story is about a woman who is the assistant to the Director of a Rare Books and Special Collections Dept at a University.  She is on sabbatical working on writing a book.  However, she is called back to work when her boss is struck ill with a stroke.  He is in hospital in a coma.

Things are tense at the university because a rare collection of books had recently been acquired by the university.  The books are supposed to be locked in the safe in the Director's office but no one knows the current combination for the safe.  When the Assistant Director, now Acting Director manages to get the combination from the man's wife, they are shocked to find that the safe is empty.

The Assistant Director may feel that she could be the Director but she really seems to be unable to handle all the stress and takes to drinking, or drinking more than she did.  She leaves phone and email messages unanswered. She has a husband who is supposed to be a painter but who seems to be depressed and unmotivated.  The woman doesn't seem to get much support from her colleagues, some of whom feel that she is not suited for her new job.

The people who donated money to acquire this special set of books are eager to see the books at a special event.  The University President tells the woman to stall for time, she tells the patrons that insurance has not yet come through on the books so they offer them a glimpse at an old, rare early mathematics book instead.  The woman then spends time down in the storage area going through books with another colleague trying to find out if the missing books were shelved by mistake.  What a totally unmanagerial thing to do. A prof comes to the woman asking to carbon date the math book.  She is at first reluctant to do this but eventually agrees.  She is devastated to learn that the book is a facsimile.

Around the time all this is happening one of the staff, a woman, comes and asks to speak to the acting director, she is quite upset.  But because an event is underway the Acting Director tells her she will see her later but she does not followup with her.  The female employee does not show up for work for several days.  Finally the woman contacts the woman's estranged husband and eventually the police to report her missing.  The news breaks that this woman stole the missing books.  Eventually they find out that the woman drowned herself.

In the end it is discovered that the dead woman was having and affair with the director and somehow found out he was stealing books from the library and keeping them at his house.  His wife didn't know because he never let her into his office.

The book was about libraries but I had no sympathy for the main character, she seemed a bit of a disorganized whimp.  She did eventually find a police officer who believed her that the dead woman was innocent and helped her get to the truth.