Out of print: After nearly 40 years, Chicago's Newberry Book Fair is done

CHICAGO -- There is no shortage of used books in this city. You can find them in informal little libraries in neighborhood parks, and in community libraries requiring library cards, and in overstuffed storefronts filled with yellowing pages lacking dust covers, smelling of attics, wrapped in the plastic jackets of far-away suburban libraries.

But since 1985, the Newberry Library’s annual book fair had been the Chicago used-book-apalooza.

For 38 summers, if you were a reader, a writer or an antique obsessive, it was a must-visit: tens of thousands of donated books arranged into 70 categories, spread before thousands of book lovers, who leave a sizable chunk of change for the Newberry, a free 136-year old nonprofit literary research institution. The Newberry itself estimates that more than 10,000 books