At the Circulation Desk today we had three stacks of books returned by a graduate student who set some kind of record in number and variety of bookmarks left in the books.

Included were:

• Two gum wrappers, one silver and one green, both fortunately empty and dry.
• Self-checkout machine receipts (no surprise) plus receipts from several other sources.
• Post-it notes.  We do not like Post-It notes in books.  If they stick around too long they damage pages.   Beyond one or two understandably overlooked, we grumble when we have to remove Post-it Notes from books.
• Besides intact Post-It notes of at least two sizes, there were torn pieces of yellow Post-It Notes and a solitary pink Post-It note piece.
• A short stack of  unused Post-It notes still on their brown paper end sheet.   Great.  We can use them.
• Bits and strips of otherwise unidentified white paper, some with scribbled notes:  “Crucial ideological value of media,” “Ford(?) and Post-(scribble) in cinema.”  Also,
• A scrap of yellow legal pad paper.
• A shred of newspaper (Rice Thresher.  I think.)
• A short coil of wire.
• An airline boarding pass (Quantas)
• A vintage Man Ray postcard with its back side covered in page numbers and scribbled  notes.
• An old Catalog card for a political science treatise in German,with the call number of a book about recent Ojibway cultural history jotted on the back. (When the Card Catalog was supplanted by the Online Catalog and phased out, the cards with their blank backs were repurposed as freely available jottings cards for Library patrons.)
• A computer-printed receipt for a Standing Room Only ticket to Live Nation Presents LCD Soundsystem.  And:
• A Fondren Library bookmark.  Imagine that.  Using a book mark for a book mark!