2008
- Press release (23 June
2008) from the U.S. Department of Justice, District of Montana in the Western Washington University case.
This includes the following passages about a Brubaker accomplice. 'Law enforcement interviewed a long-time colleague
who has known BRUBAKER for more than 40 years. He advised that he and BRUBAKER had been together in the Seattle area
when BRUBAKER and his wife took 15 to 20 books from an unknown library and stated that BRUBAKER had taken three to
four trips into the library and obtained these books. The witness admitted to being present with BRUBAKER and his wife
on three occasions when BRUBAKER took library books from libraries in Reno, Nevada, San Francisco, California and the
Seattle, Washington area.' Brubaker's 'explanation' is also worth noting: 'BRUBAKER further uttered spontaneously that
it is typical for libraries to clear out inventory and the books to be offered up on open market with evidence of
library use still affixed. BRUBAKER further stated that, "I admit I've been to Western Washington University," and
that he had been there with a friend from Canada.' There does not seem to be any estimate of the period covered by the thefts.
- < http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080624/NEWS01/806240323/1002/news01
> 'Great Falls man pleads guilty to stealing rare library books' (24 June 2008) - 'James Lyman Brubaker,
74, of Great Falls pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to charges that he stole rare library books with
the intent of re-selling them, according to U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer. Sentencing is set for Sept. 15.' The
article reviews earlier accounts of the one-man campaign, by Rob Lopresti of Western Washington
University, to bring the thief to account. However, it goes on to explain:
'More than 100 libraries are represented in the recovered books. Hundreds of maps, lithographs, and serial
plates were found in envelopes ready for sale on eBay. Possibly tens of thousands of maps, lithographs and
plates were found in plastic containers, according to court documents.
'During the search, investigators also found the tools used by Brubaker to steal the documents and books from
the library, and to "clean" them for resale. Investigators found magnets used to de-magnetize books so that
they could go through security without setting off an alarm, chemicals and brushes used to remove stamps,
codes, and other identifiers from the stolen books, mailers used to fortify and protect the documents and
which could be quickly sealed to prevent casual observation or law enforcement observation without a
warrant, and cutting tools.
'Of the 832 books believed to have been stolen by Brubaker, 338 books have been confirmed to have been stolen
from libraries. Of the apparent 109 victim libraries and universities (and other sources of books), 51 have
been confirmed as having been the victim of the thefts. Victim libraries were found in Arizona, California,
Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas,
Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
'Brubaker also had valuable books from libraries in Calgary, Edmonton, and Lethbridge, all in Alberta,
Canada. Victim libraries in Montana included libraries in Belt, Big Timber, Billings, Bozeman, Browning,
Butte, Frenchtown, Great Falls, Helena, Miles City, Red Lodge, and Roundup.
'Of the 832 volumes, 604 books were published from 1900 to the present, 207 published from 1800-1899; and 21
published from 1749 -1799. To date, 338 of the texts have been determined to have an aggregate value of
$89,110. Based upon known values, the calculated total theft loss amount is approximately $220,000. Damage
to existing volumes where certain pages were removed by a razor or similar device has not yet been
determined.
'Brubaker faces possible penalties of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and 3 years supervised release,
Mercer said. He is currently detained.'
- Further on the case of Peter Joseph Bellwood. < http://www.cphpost.dk:80/get/107185.html > 'Map
thief says sorry. A UK man who stole a series of medieval maps from the Royal Library apologised to the
Danish people for his actions' (the Copenhagen Post, 14 May 2008) - 'A British thief was sentenced to one
year in prison for stealing several maps dating from the 16th and 17th centuries from the Royal Library in
2001, reported Politiken newspaper. The man, 56-year-old Joseph Bellwood, was captured at that time on the
library’s video camera cutting 11 authentic medieval world maps out of books during his visit there seven
years ago. Bellwood left the country before he could be caught, however, but he was later arrested and
jailed in the UK for a similar theft in Wales.
'Auction house Christie’s valued the maps at £70,000, or
around 1 million kroner, while Bellwood’s lawyer claimed the value to be only around 40,000 kroner. The
Royal Library sought a total of 4.2 million kroner in compensation for the loss, which included the
destruction of the maps’ original books. Yet the court required Bellwood to pay only 324,000 kroner in
retribution in addition to his one-year jail sentence.
'He will begin serving the sentence in 2009, after he has finished serving his UK jail term. The
whereabouts of the maps are presently unknown, as Bellwood had sold them on. Bellwood received his Danish
sentence from the Eastern High Court on Tuesday and was given the chance to speak in his defence. ‘I would
like to take this opportunity to apologise to the library and the Danish people,’ he told the court. ‘I am
very sorry for what I’ve done.’ Bellwood had also robbed libraries in other European capitals and it was
only due to the Royal Library’s cameras that he was identified and later caught' [via
Philobiblos.] See also a statement from the Danish Royal Library, posted to the MapHist list on 16
May.
- The Missing and Stolen Maps Database was officially
launched on 27 April 2008. It is managed by the
International Antiquarian Mapsellers Association (IAMA). For explanatory notes on the functioning of the Database
see the announcement to the MapHist list. I wholeheartedly endorse the comment of Joel Kovarsky: 'we sincerely hope that librarians,
dealers and collectors will make use of this site'. Now that a mechanism has been provided that allows widespread -
and it is hoped, speedy - dissemination of news about map thefts, it is essential that all the communities involved
support this initiative wholeheartedly. It should not be too long before the first thief is caught because of this
Database.
- <
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2008/04/09/artifacts_stolen_from_historical_society/ >
'Artifacts stolen from historical society' (The Boston Globe, 9 April 2008) - 'Police say someone stole everything
from historic maps and clothing to a cannon ball from the New Castle (New Hampshire) Historical Society. Police
Chief James Murphy says the thief or thieves forced their way into the society sometime during the weekend, leaving
behind a trail of blood ... The society discovered the theft on Tuesday ... maps of New Castle also were taken.'
[Update, 10 April in the Union Leader - 'New Castle historical society posts $2,000 reward in theft', by Clare
Kittredge <
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=
New+Castle+historical+society+posts+%242%2C000+reward+in+theft&articleId=b672fc6a-9fb6-41b5-bae9-5ab6764bba61 >.
More details are given of the break-in, including the fact that 'blood was left spattered over postcards, maps...'.]
- < http://criminalbrief.com/?p=696 > 'When maps get lost' (by Rob Lopresti, 2 April 2008, on the blog 'Criminal Brief: the Mystery Short Story Web
Log Project') - a personal account of events at Western Washington University and the tracking down of the suspect, James L. Brubaker. "They also found in
the vicinity of 20,000 other maps and prints, hundreds of Indian artifacts, and a thousand or so books with property stamps from about 100 libraries." It
turns out that Lopresti is a mystery writer. Via the Maps-L list, which carries a letter from Lopresti, asking what should happen to the unidentified maps
and prints. [For a round-up post, including a list of news links, see the Map Room blog on 7 April 2008.]
- < http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/to-catch-a-thief.html?c=y&page=1 > 'To Catch a Thief. How a Civil War buff's chance
discovery led to a sting, a raid and a victory against traffickers in stolen historical documents' (by Steve Twomey in the Smithonsian Magazine,
April 2008 - seen 28 March).
A multi-page article exploring the issues raised by various recent book and map thefts. The following samples
give the flavour. '"Please, please, please don't keep it quiet," Rob Lopresti, a librarian from Western Washington University, told an American
Library Association gathering in June. If you stay silent about a theft, Lopresti added, "you're sleeping with the enemy."' Inevitably, Smiley is
mentioned: 'A task force of the American Library Association, assembled after the Smiley case, has proposed that institutions mark each map with a
stamp of ownership in a place that "cannot be cut away without leaving an obvious incision," and that catalogs note unique features, such as
stains, to distinguish each map from sibling originals. A modern, obvious ownership stamp on an old document is not a universally popular solution
and marking tens of thousands of items would consume vast quantities of time and dollars. But, Harvard's Cobb says, "Any institution needs to make
that commitment."'... 'But perfect security for a special collection or an archive will never exist, and their contents will never lose allure.
Cobb, the map curator at Harvard, believes map losses might be rising as thieves try to satisfy buyers who have discovered that maps are
historical, colorful and conversational - and not as expensive as traditional artwork. While most of the Archives' holdings are never going to
fetch prices comparable to rare maps and old books, the Internet makes them just as easy to sell.'
- < http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/16830591.html > 'Pay Dirt in Montana. A librarian's sleuthing turns up a
crime with at least 100 victims' (by Steve Twomey in the Smithonsian Magazine, April 2008 - seen 27 March).{See end of the entry for
updates}
After a thief ripped 648 pages of historic maps, lithographs and other items from books at Western Washington University (WWU) in
Bellingham in February 2006, librarian Rob Lopresti kept an eye on eBay, hoping to spot the stolen items as they were fenced. And spot some
he did. His sleuthing, investigators say, helped expose a lucrative history-for-sale scheme that might have more victims than any in recent
years. On December 12, 2007, law enforcement officers used a warrant to search a house in Great Falls, Montana, where they discovered
roughly 1,000 books from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries that had been taken from at least 100 university and local libraries
across the country, according to Great Falls detective Bruce McDermott. Besides the books, he says, they found some 20,000 individual pages
of maps and other documents, each apparently ripped from a book ...
'In the Montana case, McDermott says, records at the house suggest that the enterprise completed more than 9,000 eBay deals in 2007
alone, grossing almost $500,000. As of late February, no arrests had been made, but McDermott says there is a suspect and an indictment
is expected. The breakthrough in Great Falls came after Lopresti used a feature on eBay that alerted him whenever an item that contained
certain key words was offered for sale. He and his staff had chosen about 40 such terms because various stolen pages contained them.
Within a month, Lopresti says, it was apparent that an eBay seller in Montana had many pages similar to those taken from WWU. Eventually,
Lopresti says, he turned to two friends on the East Coast to act as buyers, because the seller might be leery about bids coming from
Washington State. The friends won the bidding for two suspicious pages, and in September 2006, the state crime lab matched their paper
and tear marks with torn pages in WWU books.
'More than a year passed, however, before authorities obtained the search warrant. Sgt. Bianca L. Smith of the WWU police attributes the
delay in part to the complexity of a case involving two states, Washington and Montana, and the federal government. She notes, too, that no
one was in physical danger. During the long wait, Lopresti says, he kept seeing items sold on eBay that might have belonged to WWU. "I was
going crazy," he says. Identifying the legitimate owners of the books found at the Great Falls house should not be difficult, because most
contain library stamps or catalog numbers. But matching the thousands of individual pages with libraries might prove impossible, because a
single map or photo ripped from a volume rarely has marks identifying where it came from. A page could be from any existing copy of a
book, and there might be many copies around the world. Meanwhile, Lopresti and WWU have dramatically stepped up security, so that history
cannot walk out the door again.' The article contrasts this case with that of Smiley and Bland.
[Update 27 March. The PhiloBiblos blog reports the arrest of the
suspect, James Brubaker, and provides additional news links.] [Update, 1 April 2008: see
< http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2008/april2008/brubakerarrested.cfm > 'Washington Librarian Helps Nab Montana Library
Thief' on the American Library Association's site 'american libraries', which includes this comment: 'Lopresti admitted to American Libraries that
he feels frustrated by the lack of response from colleagues to his calls at a panel presentation at the 2007 ALA Annual Conference as well as on
map specialists’ discussion lists that libraries missing materials share information with law enforcement.' Lopresti was further quoted expressing
the following unfashionable opinion: '"We’ve got 20,000 pages with no identifying marks," he emphasized, adding that he has been urging the
Great Falls police to hire a retired map librarian on a temporary basis to sort the recovered pages, "because you actually need somebody who knows
the stuff."']
- < http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=666322&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=&newsdate=2/24/2008&TextPage=1
> 'Treasure-troves at risk. Thefts cost billions as experts work to step up security of artifacts' (Paul
Grondahl, in the [Albany] Times-Union, 24 February 2008) - A round-up of security concerns affecting US
archives and libraries, prompted by the actions of Daniel Lorello, on the staff of the New York State Archives. 'Millions of
valuable historical documents at local historical societies, state libraries and the National Archives are
vulnerable to being stolen by insiders and outsiders. The reasons are many: the sheer volume; incomplete inventories; the cost of security; the value of the artifacts
amid a growing demand from collectors; and the fact the documents are routinely retrieved by staffers for use by
researchers in public reading rooms...'
'The FBI estimates $6 billion is lost annually in crimes against cultural institutions worldwide. Strassberg
advocates spending more on security and tougher sentences for the thieves ... Mandatory bag inspections of
State Library and Archives employees as they leave work have been discussed over the years, but have not been
put in place because of concerns raised by unions and the added cost.' As one librarian pointed out: "We're
always trying to balance access and security".
[The full text also available via
ExLibris.]
- Stolen map alert from the British Library, 21 February 2008. "I very much regret to report that we have discovered the theft of
74 maps from ‘Description de l’Univers, contenant les differentes systemes du monde, les cartes ... de la géographie ancienne et
moderne ... et les moeurs ... de chaque nation’ by MANESSON MALLET, Alain. (Paris, 1683). This is now the subject of a police
investigation with the Arts and Antiques Unit. We do not yet know when the maps were stolen, and as soon as I have more information
I will be in touch again." The crime number is 230 4414/08. Any information, please, to: Judith Barnes, Collection Security
Co-ordinator, 020 7412 7821. [From Shelf:Life, with
further information from
PhiloBiblos. Rodney Shirley, Maps in the Atlases of the British Library, describes the work (Vol 1, p.667-), referring for a collation
to Pastoureau. The BL example forms part of the Rare Book, rather than Map collection.]
- 'eBay to buy back stolen historical items' (by Michael Gormley, Associated Press, 9 February 2008) - An important
development in connection with the theft of material taken from the New York State Archives by Daniel Lorello. 'Documents dating
from the Civil War and others to and from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt are among hundreds of stolen documents sold online that
eBay is agreeing to buy back and return to New York's archives, a state official said Saturday. The online auction giant has no
liability in the sale of the stolen artifacts, but agreed voluntarily to offer buyers the amount that they paid, according to the
official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because not all details of the investigation have been announced ... The total
cost of buying back the documents for which eBay has sales records is estimated at $68,000. The offer by eBay means the state
won't have to spend money to buy the records. If there is a conviction, a court could order restitution.' [The full text
available via
ExLibris.]
- 'Stolen maps database
announcement' (message to MapHist from Joel Kovarsky, 5 February 2008) - 'The International Antiquarian Mapsellers Association (IAMA) is funding the development of a stolen map database. We
hope to have a working prototype available by mid-April 2008.' The message explains how the database will function and lists those
who have signed up to the idea.
- < http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345494689 > 'The Map Thief', a suspense novel by Heather
Terrell, a Pittsburgh lawyer, is due out in July 2008 from Random House. No synopsis as yet.
- Since July 2007, Francis Herbert has been carrying out in the British Library Map Library the 'Vulnerable Maps' project,
describing in detail antiquarian maps in volumes that are judged to be at greatest risk of theft. Such maps are being identified
among the BL's collection with the aid of carto-bibliographies, stamped and scanned, as reported in Cartographiti, the
newsletter of the Map Curators' Group of the British Cartographic Society, 80 (Autumn 2007) p.5.
- A message to the Maps-L list, 10 January 2008:
"I have some news about map thefts. You may remember that in February
2006 Wilson Library at Western Washington University ... suffered a serious theft.
We eventually determined that at least 648 pages were stolen from 102
volumes. Seventy-five percent of them were maps. All but two of the
books were from the Congressional Serial Set. [Details were posted to the Maps-L list
at the time.]
Since then, we have been working to identify the thief or thieves. In part due to our efforts and those of several
people in the map librarian community, on December 12 the Department of Homeland Security (ICE)and Great Falls, Montana police
executed a search warrant on the property of James Brubaker, who sold maps, Indian artifacts, and other material on ebay under the
handle Montanasilver. To the best of my knowledge, Brubaker has not been arrested, however his ebay store has been closed down
and he is no longer a registered user there. I have heard the authorities confiscated thousands of plates and maps, hundreds of
books, and many Indian artifacts. I expect we will be hearing more in months to come in the form of federal indictments. When
we get a photo of Brubaker we will be glad to distribute it. Rob Lopresti, Government Information Librarian - rob.lopresti(at)
wwu.edu". [See also a later comment on the PhiloBiblos blog, 15
January 2008. Further update: 18 January, a photo of James Brubaker is now available.]
- < http://wikis.ala.org/acrl/index.php/RBMS_Seminars_in_Development_2008 > 'Security: Bringing It All Back Home:
Recovering from a Theft (Seminar 6)' (9 January 2008) - preliminary details of the Preconference in Los Angeles, 24-27 June 2008,
to be held by the The Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division
of the American Library Association (ALA). This is to include: Michael Inman, Librarian, Rare Books Division, New York Public
Library; Topic: 'The Smiley Thefts'.
- < http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/01/02/stolen_rare_maps_find_their_way_back_to_librarys_collection/ >
'Stolen rare maps find their way back to library's collection' (by Jenna Russell, 2 January 2008 in the Boston Globe)
'More than 30 rare, antique maps stolen from the Boston Public Library by a Martha's Vineyard map dealer were returned to the
library in 2007, library president Bernard Margolis said this week, part of the conclusion of an international scandal that rocked
the staid world of map collecting. Not all has been resolved, however. More than 30 other missing maps, losses that have not been
linked to confessed map thief E. Forbes Smiley III, have yet to be recovered by the Boston library more than a year after their
disappearance was discovered ...
'Margolis said investigators have returned 31 maps that Smiley admitted taking from the Boston library. In addition, Smiley has
paid the library $7,000 in restitution for another map he stole that cannot be found, Margolis said. Three other maps have not
been located, he said. Curators at the library inventoried their rare maps after the thefts came to light, and discovered 36 more
missing maps worth almost $1 million. Two of those maps have since been returned by collectors in Boston and Maryland, Margolis
said, and efforts to uncover the others at auctions are ongoing ... The Boston library has spent about $200,000 on improved
security and surveillance systems to prevent future thefts, Margolis said. All visitors to the rare-books room now sign in and
out. But by necessity, the thefts have left the library a less trusting place.' Also giving details of the three maps still
missing from Harvard.
2007
- 'Chile returns thousands of stolen Peruvian books' (7 November 2007 [noted 15 November]) - 'Chile returned to Peru on Monday
3,788 books, antique texts, and a variety of other artifacts dating back to the 16th century. The items were originally stolen
from Lima's National Library and taken to Santiago during the late 19th century War of the Pacific.' The returned items carry
the seal of the Peruvian National Library - a stamp of Peru's coat of arms and the inscription "Biblioteca de Lima."' The head of
Peru's National Library referred [no detail given] to 'a huge list of atlases and volumes with notes from travelers that came to explore this side
of the world'. [The full text also available via ExLibris.]
- < http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=81&story_id=45990 > 'New outbreak of map pilfering in
ministry library' (15 November 2007) [Copyright EL PAÍS, SL. / J. A. HERNÁNDEZ 2007] - 'The Foreign Ministry says that almost 300
"highly valued" books, some of them more than 400 years old, have been stolen or lost from its library in recent years ... It
appears that the thefts have taken place over a number of years. Indeed, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told EL PAÍS this week that
such pilfering is almost a tradition at the library ... Among the missing items are several maps from the late 16th century, a
number of large-format books, as well as a valuable collection of 18th-century maps of the coastline of northern Europe ... The
losses, most from the last four years, were discovered during a recent inventory of the library ... One hypothesis being explored
is that a Ministry employee has taken advantage of the poor security in the building to systematically steal books to sell them on
the black market.' [The library is open 'only to academics, or specialist researchers'. No mention is made of the coincidence that
the four-year theft period suggested here seems to be similar to that for the maps taken from the National Library.] [via Map the Universe; see the full text on ExLibris.]
- Rare Books,
Crime & Punishment (noted 14 November 2007) - a course being taught at the Graduate School of Library and Information
Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Travis
McDade.
- 'No jail time for woman who
stole rare book from Rockland Historical Society' (Steve Lieberman in the New York Journal News, 8 November 2007) - Rebecca
Streeter-Chen, who stole an 1823 copy of Tanner's New American Atlas (valued at $60,000) on April 22 from the Rockland
Historical Society, was sentenced to community service rather than jail because she has young children. [The full text also
available via
ExLibris, and for comment see Travis McDades's blog].
- Resolution [dated 1
October 2007, seen 24 October] - 'The Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) and the Map and Geography Roundtable (MAGERT) of
the American Library Association mutually commend members of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA), the
International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), and the International Antiquarian Mapsellers Association (IAMA) for their
cooperation in assisting with the recent recoveries of stolen maps and books removed from library and archival collections. Thanks
to the assistance of these organizations and other members of the antiquarian trade, valuable cultural resources have been
returned to their home libraries and archives'. Twenty dealers and auction houses are named, in connection with the Smiley thefts
and those 'from the University of Texas at Austin by Mimi Meyer'.
- < http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=520020 > 'Long Lamont Line Irks Students. Students complain about
meticulous searches by new guard; call line ‘absurd’' (Denise J. Xu in the Harvard Crimson, 12 October 2007) - Director of
Communications for Harvard College Library (HCL) Beth Brainard explained that 'thefts such as those conducted by map marauder E.
Forbes Smiley cause HCL to reevaluate their security procedures. In general, however, she said that "security measures are
proactive rather than reactive".'
- < http://www.hindu.com/lr/2007/10/07/stories/2007100750050600.htm > 'Dark side of bibliomania' (by Pradeep Sebastian, in
The Hindu, 7 October 2007) - a review of Travis McDade’s The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman
(Praeger Publishers, 2006). Among Spiegelman's haul were '284 historical maps, 237 individual maps razored out of a 17th century
version of Blaeu’s Atlas Major'. Reference is made to the famous judgement by Judge Kaplan: "great research libraries are
repositories of our social, cultural, and scientific heritage. Their rare books and manuscripts are vital to understanding the
world and often are irreplaceable objects of study for scholars who add to our knowledge of ourselves and our environment." McDade
teaches legal research at the College of Law at the University of Illinois, and runs his own blog.
- Theft of an atlas with Allard and De Wit maps from a French dealer [7 September]. "Please be advised that on 20 August an atlas was stolen
from a private premises in Normandy in France. The atlas contains 48 maps in contemp. colours of all parts of the world by Hugo
Allardt and F.de Wit. The atlas has a manuscript index and is bound in contemp. brown calf. A list of the included maps is to be
found at < http://www.loeb-larocque.com/ENGstolen_atlas.html >.Please contact us if this atlas will be, or has been offered
to you:
Béatrice Loeb-Larocque, Librairie Loeb-Larocque,31 rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris France. Tél/FAX +33 (0)1 44.24.85.80" [via Map the Universe]
- < http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2007_07/maps.html > 'Paper Trail. Close-ups -- and some recent history of
Sterling's rare maps' (Kathrin Day Lassila in the Yale Alumni Magazine, July/August 2007 [noted 2 August 2007]) - An account of
what has been done in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, post-Smiley. What was it like before? 'No lists of its patrons'
requests had been kept. Only a quarter of its 11,000 rare and antique maps had been entered into Orbis, Sterling's electronic
catalog. The card catalog proved strangely unreliable. So, in late July, as the FBI was pressing libraries everywhere to find out
whether they were missing any maps, Bill Reese [the book dealer consultant] came up with a shortcut. "I sat down and I said to
myself, ‘If I was Forbes Smiley, what would I steal?'"
Smiley had dealt principally in the rarest and most expensive antique American maps. Reese put together a list of about a hundred
likely targets. To find out which of them had once been in the collection but had disappeared, staff assistant Margit Kaye tracked
down old acquisitions records, and the staff pored over microfiche of the card catalog as it existed in 1978. All this research
was necessary because, disturbingly, the cards for many of the missing maps were themselves missing from the catalog ...
Today, Sterling and its storage space have been renovated. No one sees any of Sterling's rare maps without first signing a form
and listing the map requested. Patrons can see only one item at a time, and only while they themselves are under constant
surveillance by two video cameras. Two full-time catalogers are now at work in the collection, and the 11,000 rarities are their
main charge ...' The longer-term plan is to scan the 11,000 rare maps. [The full text also available via ExLibris.]
- < http://www.keepmecurrent.com/Community/story.cfm?storyID=40984 > 'Author: Historical societies vulnerable' (David
Harry, 2 August 2007, Bridgton, Maine) - 'William D. Andrews, author of Stealing History, will speak to the Bridgton
Historical Society [on 5 August] ... reminding listeners of the importance of protecting the artifacts and documents ... "Societies do not
always have the capacity to preserve and protect," said Andrews, who added his inspiration for the novel came from news accounts
of thefts from local societies. The conviction of E. Forbes Smiley for stealing millions of dollars worth of maps from libraries
is almost as extreme as the premise of Stealing History, but his conviction and the book show the ease of concealing
documents that might be quickly sold to collectors and make historical societies inviting targets.'
- < http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070723/REPOSITORY/707230302 > 'State libraries must work to
thwart thieves' (Editorial in the 'Concord Monitor' [New Hampshire], 23 July 2007) - The example of Forbes Smiley is used to urge
libraries to put effort into cataloguing. Otherwise 'the rare maps and prints that can easily be excised from seldom-read books
are easy prey for a knowledgeable thief ... Searchable, online catalogs of a library or museum's contents make its easy for honest
dealers, other museums, researchers and law enforcement to identify stolen items.'
- There was a session on 'Library Security for Maps' during the annual conference of the American Library Association
(Washington, D.C., 21-27 June 2007), on which see the report by April Carlucci, reproduced from
Cartographiti, and the brief report, 'Library Security for Maps: 2007 Conference Program and Guidelines', by Jenny Marie Johnson, Janet B. Dixon,
David A. Cobb, Co-chairs of MAGERT Task Force on Library Security for Cartography Resources, July 2007.
- < http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-05252007-1352883.html > 'Stolen antique atlas, valued at $65k, recovered in
Philadelphia' (Associated Press, 25 May 2007) - an example of the 1823 New American Atlas by Henry Tanner, stolen in April
from the Historical Society of Rockland County, was recovered when it was offered for sale in Philadelphia. 'A former employee of
the Historical Society was trying to sell the book and is a suspect in the theft'. The original theft was reported (via ExLibris)
to the MapHist list. [For a fuller
account of the circumstances of the recovery, in which the circulation of details 'from a list of professional rare-book dealers'
[ExLibris] was crucial, see 'Stolen 1823 atlas recovered', in The Journal News (26 May 2007) <
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007705260369 >. The full text of which is available via ExLibris; and likewise a follow-up piece on June 1 from The Journal News.]
