Summary

Chapter 14. Book titles at the beginning of this chapter: Wasa-Wasa: a Tale of Trails and Treasures in the Far North; Map Librarianship: An Introduction; Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding; and Genealogy, and Enjoying It.

In this brief chapter, author Orlean writes about the current map collection at the Central Library. She meets and describes the librarian in charge of the collection, Glen Creason, who invited her into the library because he had someone he wanted her to meet. On her way in, she passes a cart full of discarded books, including one titled Wasa Wasa …, a collection of Swedish folk tales.

When she finds Creason, he is in the company of a young autistic man named CJ and his father; CJ, Creason says, is obsessed with maps and has been helping archive a large collection found in the...