BUFFALO, N.Y. — The resources you can find at public libraries seem to be ever-growing. One collection is keeping an eye on the future by preserving the past.
Deep in the stacks of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library is a massive collection of books.
“We’re contemporary. We’re of the moment,” explained Heather Gring, the rare book curator for Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.
But these books aren’t your standard page-turners.
“The oldest thing in our collection is 4,000 years old, and the most contemporary is local press that has been made this year,” said Gring.
Spectrum News 1 was given a rare look inside the rare book vaults.
“The difference between an old book and a rare book is who wants to buy it,” Gring explained.
Cameras, locks and key codes are trying to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
“This collection is worth, collectively, millions of dollars,” said Gring. “The way the Rare Books department was even started was because of a theft in the 1930s. […] They worked with the FBI, and they did successfully retrieve almost all of the books that had been stolen.”
Keeping these treasures safe doesn’t mean keeping them hidden. This is one of only about 25 rare book departments in the country to be housed in a public library.
“You’ll be guided through the process. We’ll check your ID, we will have you wash your hands, and then we will sit with you in a special room so that you can have access to the texts,” Gring explained.
Gring is in charge of preserving and growing the collection.
“Jillian Hanesworth, who was Buffalo’s first poet laureate, wrote her first book of poetry in a soft-cover gum binding,” she said. “That’s not a rare book, but 100 years from now, is there going to be a pristine copy of that anywhere that you can access? I’d say that’s probably unlikely.”
Everything in their collection, from Shakespeare’s first folio to tarot cards of today, imparts knowledge of the times.
“It’s about what this unique object can tell us about our shared history here,” she added.
Some of it hits harder than others, like pre-Civil War pro-slavery texts.
“If we’re only documenting one side of a conversation, how can we ever know what really transpired?” she said.
But some of it is just plain cool.
“This is the part that makes me always so nervous,” Gring said as she delicately unveiled their most valuable book.
The jewel of this collection is the handwritten manuscripts of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
“He first writes, ‘you will not know about me.’ And then he edits it; he scribbles some words out,” she explained as she walked through the inner thoughts of Mark Twain writing the iconic opening paragraph to the classic tale. “This is incredibly important to our shared public history, but so are all those undertold stories as well, or those manuscripts that may have been lost forever because they were not as valuable to preserve as this one.”
It’s exactly that which keeps Gring looking for the next timeless piece.
“We’re caring for this collection for the citizens of tomorrow,” she said. “That, to me, is an intergenerational love letter that I am just so grateful to be part of.”