By Jo Garcia-Cobb
After turning 90 years old and receiving the Librarian Emeritus Award from Mount Angel Abbey Library this spring, Mount Angel resident Josef Sprug still doesn’t plan to retire.
“I’ll work until I can’t work anymore,” said Sprug, who has served as volunteer librarian at the abbey library for almost 25 years.
Sprug’s career at the abbey library came after he retired from a prodigious career as librarian, author, indexer, and lecturer in various educational and government institutions across the nation, including the Catholic University of America, U.S. Air Force Academy, and St. Edwards University. He holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Meinrad College, a B.S.L.S from Catholic University of America, and a master’s degree in philosophy.
Sprug has compiled several books of indexes, including the Index to American Reference Books, a Bibliography of Time Perception (joint author), and an Index to Fairy Tales, Myths, and Legends. He has made indexes for more than 600 books and written hundreds of book reviews.
A few months before moving to Mount Angel in 1988, Sprug was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was bluntly told that he had five years to live. Another doctor told him that the first doctor should have said that, statistically, he had five years to live, but that he could die of old age before he died of cancer.
Almost 25 years later, Sprug, soft spoken and unassuming in manner, is in fairly good health and works 35 hours a week, not counting the time he spends with take-home work reading book reviews and suggesting titles to add to the collection.
To date, Sprug has catalogued more than 24,000 books at the abbey library, starting in 1988 with the 20,000-volume multi-lingual collection of the well-known philosopher Richard McKeon. After spending some years selecting books to add to the library collection, Sprug started cataloguing the pre-1800 rare books, about 4,000 volumes, which had not been catalogued since they were purchased in the 1930s. These books range from oversized illuminated manuscripts and miniature prayer books from the Middle Ages to classics in numerous fields of study.
“He has spent untold hours with countless people who come from all over the globe to see the rare books. Josef’s dedication to, and love of, the library has made the library experience richer for us all,” said Victoria Ertelt, Mount Angel Abbey Library administrator.
“Working with the old books here have been the best years of my life. Making rare books known and available to people is something I love to do,” Sprug said.
Father Hugh Feiss, former abbey library director, said sharing the rare books with the public is Sprug’s most valuable contribution to the library.
Sprug’s personal favorites in the rare books collection are the “emblem books,” a category of mainly inspirational illustrated books printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. These books typically contain a visual image, accompanied by one or more short texts intended to inspire readers to reflect on a general moral lesson derived from the reading of both picture and text together. In talking about his fondness for the whimsical and innocent qualities found in “emblem books,” Sprug echoed a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Sprug delights in showing books that are a quiet witness to historical truths. One such book is a German translation of the Bible from the 15th century, before the birth of Martin Luther. “It’s one of the 18 pre-Luther German translations of the Bible and is extremely rare,” he said.
Born and raised in Fort Smith, Ark., Sprug developed his love of books during the Depression, when poverty forced a lot of people to stay home. “I read a lot then. You didn’t drive anywhere or go on vacation,” Sprug recalled.
It wasn’t so much his love of books, however, that compelled him to become a librarian: “I wanted to be a journalist, but I realized that I’d starve to death if I relied on freelance journalism.” Sprug took to heart a librarian’s advice to get a library degree. He pursued a library career that enabled him and his wife Joan to raise a family of six children.
Some years ago, the Abbey Library had a newsletter for which individual faculty and staff members were asked to name and briefly annotate the five books that have made the strongest, longest-lasting impression on them. Sprug’s contribution began: “These titles come from first readings in my late teens and early twenties, the time after I stopped doubting my own existence, and during the time when I doubted everyone else’s existence.”
Sprug’s favorite books, listed in the order read, are: Works of Francis Thompson; The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton; The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Pensées (Thoughts) by Blaise Pascal, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
