The lost books of Sophocles -

no, not that one! While visiting our newly renovated and reopened Loker Reading Room, I happened upon our collection of American biographical dictionaries, and on a lark looked up my friend Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles. Lo and behold, not only did I find him in two editions, but I also was able to confirm for the first time that he is supposed to have written a series of books about the natural sciences - astronomy, botany, and zoology - that while having once existed in multiple editions (the astronomy text was reprinted at least four times) are no longer accounted for. How is this possible? One book going missing I can see, but here it seems that nothing less than an entire bookshelf of Old Sophie's "hapanta" has gone AWOL. Considering that I have been charged to round up the man's collected works, published and unpublished, this is more than just an academic matter. It's a challenge! But where does one start to look for books that seem no longer to exist?