“I said, ‘I can’t do anything unless you come up and see the books,” Pratum recalled. “We were talking about wanting to build out the esoteric end of the library,” Thomas said. Some rare books will need to be encased in glass, but most will be out and available for perusing and borrowing. She’s also eyeing another, even larger, collection Pratum has in storage. The market for rare books has waned tremendously.