Retired librarian leaves $878,000 estate

This is the economics lesson for the day, illustrating what can be accomplished with consistent work and a modest lifestyle:

Bob Olson was a quiet fellow who cataloged books for a living before he retired to the same modest, well-kept two-story home that his parents owned before him...

He was frugal, too... He didn't drive, getting around by bike or taxi.

But since his death last summer at age 82, Robert J. Olson is making a big impact -- especially on two neighboring households to whom he bequeathed $50,000 each, evidently for the small kindnesses they'd shown him in his final years.

And those are the smallest of his gifts. The University of Minnesota libraries -- where the heirless Olson worked for 23 years -- stand to get several hundred thousand dollars, depending on his estate's worth. Olson earmarked another $50,000 for the foundation that supports Hennepin County's libraries.  He also willed an unrestricted gift of $100,000 to the city of Minneapolis...

Library catalogers such as Olson work behind the scenes, giving incoming materials a place in the library, both on the shelves and in the library catalog. Olson was a library science graduate of the university... He had a house filled with hundreds, perhaps several thousand, of books, and loved public broadcasting.

Olson also represented an archetype that's fading from the neighborhood, Gorman said. "There were all these sort of Norwegian bachelor farmers in the neighborhood," she said.