The Waitaki Community Society hopes to expand the Kurow Museum by buying the Kurow Curios and Bookshop next door, but in order to do that the society first needs to find a home for the bookshop's 30-year-old book and magazine collection.
Waitaki Community Society member Bob Watherston said an assessment of the collection had thrown up some interesting finds.
''We have got one particular book, on New Zealand statistics in the 1900s, which is one of just four copies in New Zealand.''
A volunteer had been assessing each book individually to sort out potentially valuable ones and as part of that assessment a rare and valuable copy of the Lyttelton Times had been found, Mr Watherston said.
Although the 1905 copy of the newspaper was ''worth quite a bit'' to private collectors, he had contacted the Canterbury Museum to see if it would be interested in it, he said.
The museum was ''very willing'' to take possession of the newspaper, which was dated January 27, Mr Watherston said.
''Farms were for sale for $50 each and cars were for sale for $105.''
''The Canterbury Museum already have a copy, but it is kept in a building badly affected by earthquake damage, so they can't get in to see if it still survives,'' Mr Watherston said.
A large portion of books had been put up for sale in an ''ongoing'' auction in Dunedin, and a total of about 20,000 books had been disposed of over the past two months, he said.
An open day was also planned to allow the public to see the extensive collection, which included at least 20 sets of encyclopedias, he said.
''Now that we are getting them sorted, we might be able to get rid of a few.''
However, there were still ''an awful lot'' of books to find homes for, he said.
