It is not uncommon for Jim Pombriant to find unusual things in the books donated to the Auburn Public Library for fundraising.
The assistant in fundraising at the library has found receipts, credit card numbers, bank slips, book marks and even love letters.
“It’s like your grandmother’s attic in here sometimes,” he said as he gestured around the stacks of books set up for last weekend’s Friends of the Library sale. “There are all of these treasures.”
He even had one book donated by someone keeping close tabs on Michael Skakel’s trial for the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley. Every page contained a newspaper clipping from the 2002 trial and when he opened the book up, “they fell out like snowflakes.”
So when “The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary” was donated, he cracked open the two volumes to check for mementos from people’s past.
He did not expect to find a gold embossed invitation to President Barack Obama’s recent inauguration.
“Obviously, they put it in there to preserve it,” Pombriant said.
Since the book was donated anonymously, and the invitation was not personalized, the library has no way of knowing who it belongs to.
But the library is holding on to it, just in case.
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