My local club, the Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco, has an excellent chess library, with about 2,000 books, along with complete runs of the British Chess Magazine, Informator, New in Chess, and others.
I have meant for some time to read Alexander Baburin’s acclaimed book Winning Pawn Structures (Batsford, 1998), long recognized as a classic but out of print for years. I was pleased to find that the Mechanics’ Institute had a copy, but was surprised and delighted to find that it comes from the author himself, as attested by the inscription:
Alexander Baburin kindly contributed to an article on ‘Favourite Chess Books’ on the Elm Mount Chess Club website (find under ‘Chess Pieces’). He specifically cited the classics ‘My System’ (Nimzovich) and Bronstein’s ‘Zurich 1953’. Time will tell whether his own book will appear on such lists!