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I’ve been catching up slowly on the blog of Simon Holloway and was loathingly jealous of his—as a postgraduate—being able to grab as he wished from the USyd Library Undergraduate Collection, as he described, “Like a child in a candy store…“, collecting 31 titles.

This was redeemed only a little by McGill’s library going back to their Wednesday night practice of leaving recycling bins full of books outside in the cool air, waiting for people to come and rifle through them for anything of use.

Little pamphlets only eighty pages long, paperbacks, hardcovers thin and thick. Most are in English; some in French; others on occasion in assorted languages, such as Hebrew: This evening, David Zvi came and offered me a book of Genesis in Hebrew with some commentaries. He told me the bins have been back out there for two weeks.

So I went down on my way from the library and took my turn at them. Five large bins of books. Many are cheap novels; some are classics that everyone already has; others are large textbooks and pamphlets on various topics; household encyclopedias; childrens’ colouring books and stories; a lot of books on economics (and how to succeed) from various ages; psychology is always popular, maybe because anything ten years old is outdated; others on sex and anything taboo.

And occasionally there’s something worth taking, or just amusing.

The other guy searching with me at first (before others joined) managed to find a free Agatha Christie novel, and soon a great Christmas/birthday present: “How to manage a urinary tract infection.”

I’m not sure how useful my takings are, but there’s no harm in having them, and no guilt in later throwing them away. My first find (and a good one) was a Pocket Books French/English dictionary, which may come in handy alongside the French text book I picked up from a second-hand shop in Boston, in these last few weeks of chance to learn the language. My second was a small pamphlet on “The Christian Mysteries: Prayer and Sacrement,” which might come in handy when I finish using my family’s history as toilet reading material. Then there was “How to Satisfy a Man Every Time and have him beg for more!” which falls under the same category as managing urinary tract infections (good for giving). As I was leaving, a fellow digger called out for anyone interested in learning Ancient Greek and so I picked up an introductory text. And when I came back later, I acquired Strunk and White’s style guide to American English (3rd ed., 1979).

All this begs to ask where all these hundreds upon hundreds of books come from. Well, they appear weekly outside the main library, which suggests that they were once inside. But they bear no mark of cataloguing. So the library was given them but didn’t want them in their collection. Which is fair enough: few of the books would fit well in a research library; those that do might be obsolete, others already in the collection. Most of the books seem to have come from household libraries, but wouldn’t most households try profiting by selling to a second-hand bookshop? Maybe these are even the books the bookshops rejected! But most people don’t ask. Gleefully, they just reach in and take.

And so it is on Wednesday nights that those who know, or those who are curious enough to approach, take no caution in throwing their arms into big blue bins, upturning the piles of books and scrap paper and magazines. Pulling them out, checking their spines, throwing them back. Believing that somewhere in there will be a shining gem. No one asks with any care where they came from, or who is throwing all these out, they just come with the faith that maybe this week, just maybe, the bins will contain the book for them.

These might not amount to Simon’s finds from the Fisher Undergratuate Library. But at least, when it’s warm enough, they’re back every week!