Deep in the stacks of Dinand Library, Jane McGrail ’17 knelt on the floor, surrounded by a wealth of information contained by the library’s half-million volumes.
But that afternoon, she was on the hunt for a different kind of treasure. She thumbed carefully through the yellowed pages of a book titled “The Life of Charles Dickens,” written by John Forster and printed in the late 1800s.
“Here’s an interesting inscription!” she said excitedly, stopping to point to a handwritten scrawl in black ink.
Those traces of the pen, some say, are just as valuable as the printed words inside. It’s evidence of the human hands that touched the book, turned its pages and perhaps gifted that particular copy to a friend or loved one.