The Sonny Bono Memorial Book Collection

 By Bruce Shawkey
























Here's one for the books: 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 (below), born 1886, in Wabasha, Minnesota. She began her library career in 1911 as the


Looks like a librarian!
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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dawn Photos Over the Years

Image
 Cutlines as needed. Produced from slides that Dad shot from 35mm camera. Mom at age 40 with baby Dawn Dawn with Karen at her wedding with Curt Dawn with big brother Bruce Dawn on the fire escape at 639                                                                                            East Johnson Street Dawn with Mom at baptism Dawn with babysitter Mandy, who worked at Mel's Diner   Dawn with Mom and Bruce, possibly at Knott's Berry Farm                                                   Dawn and Bruce at Grandma and Grandpa's house Dawn and Bruce at S...
Read more

Pete and Mabel's Trip to the 1939 World's Fair and Beyond

Image
 By Bruce Shawkey My grandparents traveled by auto to the 1939 World's Fair in New York. It must have quite a journey on so many levels. To my knowledge, they never ventured very far from their home in Lodi, Wis. Also, consider there were no Interstate Highways in those days, just two-lane roads. I wondered if they even had a road map, or just went "east," following Grandpa's innate sense of direction. I don't know what car they drove; presumably there was 27,875 miles on the odometer. They took someone with them named Ella, who I assume was Ella Marfelius, who my grandparents mentioned several times, but I never met, at least to my knowledge. In any event, here is the log/journal that Mabel kept of their journey (with annotations in italics). "Left Lodi 7 a.m. 27,875 ( miles on odometer ), August 20, 1939. Ate dinner at LaGrange, Ill. Not very good service. Slept first night in cabin near Ft. Wayne. We cooked bacon and eggs without inquiring and later found ...
Read more