Special Collections: Where the old stuff never gets old

It’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, the library has just opened, and Cherie Willis is already having a good time.

Cherie is the gatekeeper for the Special Collections section of the Salt Lake City Main Library, a room chock full of treasured books, publications and other artifacts, some of them dating back well before the library’s beginnings in 1898.

For Cherie, who has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in library science from BYU, it’s clear that, to her, the old stuff never gets old. It’s like we just opened King Tut’s tomb.

The materials are all Utah related. There are no first editions of Shakespeare or Cervantes. But there is a first edition of “Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley.” Published in 1855, the lengthy book, a lon