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BLOOMINGTON -- The Bloomington Public Library is running a little lean on cookbooks because of an errant foodie who is slicing and dicing sections about desserts and comfort foods.
Jane Chamberlain, the library's manager of adult services, is steamed.
"What bugs me so much is: This is a library. You can take the books home for free and just copy down the recipes," Chamberlain said.
Librarian Mary Cruser noticed the problem over the summer when she found chopped-up cookbooks.
By the time she finished counting missing pages and weighing the damage, the library's collection had been thinned by nearly 100 volumes.
That roughly adds up to $2,000 in damage.
In one book on cheesecake, pages were sliced out chapters at a time. Chamberlain said maybe 50 of the original 189 pages remain.
"And we like cheesecake. It's our best friend," she said, noting one of the missing recipes was for traditional New York-style cheesecake.
Left behind were recipes for chocolate-almond and Irish coffee cheesecakes.
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