The Sonny Bono Memorial Book Collection

 By Bruce Shawkey

Here's one for the "That's Incredible" archives. A collection of obscure books has been accumulated on the Internet archive bearing the name of The Sonny Bono Memorial Book Collection. A few titles include "America's Housekeeping Book," "Bicycling as a Hobby," and "2500 books for the Prison Library."

The “Sonny Bono Memorial Collection,” a set of digitized full-text books published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1941. The collection takes advantage of an obscure section of U.S. copyright law, section 108(h), which allows libraries and archives to reproduce, distribute, and display books that are in the last twenty years of copyright, provided that the work is neither obtainable at a reasonable price nor being commercially exploited. 

Another book is "2500 books for the prison library," one woman's opinion of the books most helpful in rehabilitating prisoners. The author is Perrie Jones (right), born 1886, in Wabasha, Minnesota. She


Looks like a librarian!

 began her library career in 1911 as the public librarian of her hometown. In 1916, she earned her librarian's certificate from the New York Public Library School. Shortly afterwards, she served overseas with the YMCA during WWI.

Upon her return to Minnesota in 1921, Jones started working at the Saint Paul Public Library, where she organized libraries for wounded veterans and hospital patients. In 1928, she was appointed as the Supervisor of Minnesota State Institutional Libraries. In this role, she managed the library needs of the state's hospitals, schools, and prisons.

She categorized her list as follows:

Stories of— (a) adventure (c) college and school (d) for discriminating reader (e) war (f) humor (h) history (i) Indians (m) mystery (n) negroes (o) sea (p) dogs, horses, etc. (r) romance (s) sport, football, baseball, etc. (w) West, North, pioneer days (a) short stories 

There are many more interesting books in this collection, but space does not permit their inclusion. If you want to have a look, here is the link:

https://archive.org/details/last20




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