The Davenport Public Library has found itself in the middle of a mystery.
“I got an email from one of my coworkers who works at the desk and she said, ‘You’re not going to believe what somebody just dropped off to us,'” said Tessa Wallace, Davenport Public Library’s marketing coordinator.
The Davenport Public Library has more than 200,000 combined materials for people to browse through, including books, CDs, and DVDs. Staff, though, were shocked at what they received last week.
Six dust-covered VHS tapes, including “The Mummy,” were returned.
“It’s sad. It still has the new sticker on it,” Wallace said. “All of them were checked out about 20 years ago.”
Figuring out the identity of the person who checked out the tapes two decades ago, however, is a bigger mystery.
“I don’t even know if we can look back in the system anymore because this was card catalogs and we have computers now,” Wallace said.
The entire ordeal had library staff members both baffled and laughing.
“We don’t have any VHS tapes in circulation anymore. We have a pretty large DVD collection, for TVs and movies, but we don’t have any more VHS, unfortunately,” Wallace said.
The cost for two decades worth of overdue fines is probably not as much as you think.
“We’re actually fine-free now,” Wallace said. “We wiped out our fines a couple years ago, and we don’t charge overdue fines anymore, especially because we don’t have VHS in the collection anymore. We would wipe that from the collection. Turned out well!”
