Book 36 years overdue returned to FVRLibrariesSubscriber Exclusive

FVRLibraries marked its 75th anniversary in unexpected style last month as a bit of history popped up in the form of a book lost for more than three decades.

An unidentified woman returned a copy of Danielle Steel’s 1987 romance novel “Zoya” to the Stevenson Community Library on March 22, a little more than 36 years after it was last checked out.

“It was kind of surprising,” said Janet Alder, FVRLibraries’ marketing and communications coordinator. “We get overdue books, but not this overdue.”

The woman told library employees that she found the book while cleaning a friend’s house, Alder said.

The book was returned in good condition, said David Wyatt, manager of the Stevenson Community Library.

“That is an accomplishment in itself after 36 years,” he said. “We are always circulating a significant portion of our collection (377,744 physical items in 2024), so in some ways the library has book shelves in all of our patrons’ homes, and they take great care of their little portion of our collection. We’d run out of space very quickly if we had to have space for every item in our collection within our walls.”

The book included a date-due card — last stamped with a return date of Jan. 14, 1989 — and an orange bookmark with printed instructions about how to return books to FVRL branches by mail.

“We don’t use the date-due cards anymore because everything’s automated,” Alder said. “The book was not even in our system because it last circulated before our integrated system came online. We were doing things much more manually back then.”

Alder said that while FVRLibraries stopped charging late fees several decades ago, the organization does have a process in place to encourage people to return materials that are past their due date.

“After 30 days, we assume that the book is lost, and then there’s a charge for the replacement cost that is assessed to the patron’s account,” she said. “And once that happens, most of the books come back. But if it’s more than $40 that’s charged on the account, then the account is blocked and they’re not allowed to check out again until that book is returned or the fee for the book is paid.”

Wyatt said that the book reminded him of how much library services have changed over the years, “yet in important ways remain the same.”

“While in the last five to 10 years it has been popular for library systems across the country to go ‘fine free,’ FVRL eliminated overdue fines in 1970,” he said. “Your typical overdue book news story would calculate the overdue fines owed for such a lengthy time, but (here), the answer in 2025 is that same as 1989 or 1970, which is $0.00 in overdue fees.”

The book is currently still in Stevenson and could be returned to circulation at some point, Alder said.

“Our collection librarians will probably take a look and see if we have a need for the book,” she said. “If we have a lot of copies of it, then we may not need another copy in the collection, but if we need it, they could certainly put a barcode on it and put it in the catalog and start circulating it again.”

Doug Flanagan: 360-735-4669; doug.flanagan@columbian.com