Did You Know...

Here's A Library Reader Pick

Did you know our library has a box and some containers full of buttons that were donated. When were they donated? Are they valuable? Who knows!

Today, we begin with one of our Reader’s Picks! We asked you all a couple weeks ago what we should write about. One thing that many of you mentioned was more stories of the library. In particular, our friend Liz suggested framing some library stories as “Did You Know…” So, ready? Let’s go!

DID YOU KNOW that out library has a whole collection of weird, undocumented, well, stuff that you wouldn’t think would be there. For example, we don’t just have one actual rattle snake rattle. We have two!

Griffin Free Public Library is chartered as not just a library, but a museum as well. Ninty-nine percent of our non-book collection is cataloged, documented and accounted for in some way.

This rattle snake rattle, taken from a snake not far from the library, was donated to us in 1905 by Melvin Hall. You can touch it!

But a bunch of items… oh boy! I think of it like the library’s junk drawer. I’d bet you most libraries have a junk drawer - just a collection of nicks and nacks donated over the years that kind of don’t really fit into any category and aren’t valuable enough to warrant collection status, but are just unique enough that we don’t want to get rid of them either.

So, here’s what we’ll do. Want to see any of these? Just come on in! Want to actually touch a 120 year old rattle snake rattle? Just ask! Know anything about buttons? Have a look, maybe you’ll see something we don’t see. You never know!

Enjoy your tour through our junk drawer!

This photo was donated to us in 1897 by Mary Gilbert.

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