[CPProt.net] Valuable maps too easily stolen from books, libraries

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Valuable maps too easily stolen from books, libraries
Sunday, August 14, 2005

By Lillian Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

An X-acto blade can slit a page from a book in less than a second, and
police say that's how a well-known rare-documents dealer stole maps worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars from Yale University.

The Philadelphia-based FBI art crime team issued an alert this month to
institutions that hold rare maps in their collections, advising them to
determine whether they were missing any, and soon libraries from Chicago to
London were reporting that they were. No rare maps in local collections are
missing, but those in charge of reading rooms say that such major thefts
always prompt reviews of inventory and security measures.

E. Forbes Smiley III, a Masschusetts-based dealer in antique maps, has been
charged with stealing rare maps by cutting them from books in Yale
University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. A librarian spotted
a blade on the floor of the reading room this summer. A Yale detective
followed Smiley out of the library and asked if the blade belonged to him. 

According to an affidavit filed in Connecticut Superior Court, Smiley
replied, "Yes, it is. I must have dropped it," and then, inexplicably,
added, "I have a cold."

In Smiley's briefcase and pockets, the detective found several rare maps,
together valued at $878,000. He pleaded not guilty last week and is due back
in court Oct. 3. 

This isn't the first case of rare-book slasher thefts. A former landscape
gardener named Peter Bellwood systematically and repeatedly pillaged the
National Library of Wales over a period of months in 2000 by cutting maps
out of books with a hobby knife and sticking them down his pants.

But the notion that an act more associated with thoughtless college students
than savvy thieves could allow theft of rare and valuable items has roiled
the community of scholars and collectors bound together by their fascination
with maps. 

Maps tucked into books are especially vulnerable, said Tony Campbell, former
map librarian at the British Library who also worked as an antiquarian map
dealer.

"If you take a page out of a rare book, you've got a worthless piece of
paper. But if you take a map, you haven't destroyed its worth. It's likely
to have fair amount of value, and it's virtually untraceable. That's the joy
of it for the thief."

The theft can be hard to detect. "That book is handed to someone, then
handed back with one folded map removed," Campbell said.

Unless the librarian is aware that there are maps inside the book, and knows
how many, a theft can easily go undetected. 

"Now all the libraries, not just in North America, are scurrying around,
scrabbling about, looking to see whether those books lost their maps,"
Campbell said.

The FBI art crime team is investigating whether Smiley has taken maps from
the Newberry Library in Chicago, the British Library in London and the
Boston Public Library. There is no indication that Smiley visited any
Pittsburgh libraries. 

The fact that thefts can go undetected for years is one of the aspects of
this type of crime that makes it difficult to fight. It might seem basic
that a library should know what it has and whether something is missing, but
it's not that simple.

"We have about 30,000 boxes of archival materials. That's excluding the
thousands of books we have," said Michael Dabrishus, assistant director of
libraries for archives, special collections and preservation at the
University of Pittsburgh. "Even within a box, there may be [up to] 3,000
pieces of paper or other items. Trying to do inventory would be quite time
consuming."

Much mitigates against preventing theft or catching map thieves, Campbell
said. 

Knowledgeable thieves can take what he calls "common rare maps," documents
with a number of copies around the world, some of which could legitimately
be for sale. "How's anyone going to know which is legitimate and which are
not?"

Dealers or buyers would know whether libraries marked such documents with
indelible stamps of some kind, a practice Campbell advocates but which many
others in the field do not like. 

"I know some institutions that did emboss valuable materials, but anything
that is done that might somehow damage or mar an item is frowned upon in
this business, particularly with rare maps or rare manuscripts," Dabrishus
said. "We're caught, on one hand, trying to provide access to these
materials and, on the other hand, most collectors don't like to collect
something like that. People out there collecting want the most pristine copy
available."

Things are different at Carnegie Library, which didn't have a special
collections section until 1988, archivist Greg Priore said. 

"Most of the material in the library has been stamped to death," said
Priore, who is in charge of the Carnegie's William R. Oliver Special
Collections Room.

Ink or perforated stamps are on many maps, he said. "From a rarity
standpoint, that hurts it" and makes those such as himself who care about
documents cringe, "but from a security standpoint, it makes it hard to pass
something off." 

The clubby nature of the field also has made some institutions reluctant to
take security measures, such as forcing people to check coats and bags, sign
in and out, give proof of identity, or submit to searches, Campbell said. 

"It was sort of a gentlemen's club of scholars and respected dealers. It
seemed to be, somehow, not the way one went about things."

Though many libraries, including Yale's, use security systems with
closed-circuit television, "some are loath to. Researchers don't like to
think of Big Brother looking over them," Dabrishus said. 

Even with such measures, Campbell said, there might be a tendency to let
well-known patrons slide. Smiley had been a suspect in a previous theft, but
there was no alert about him passed to other institutions. That's a mistake
that a number of theft cases make clear.

One of the best-known map thieves is Gilbert Bland Jr., a rare-maps dealer
from Tamarac, Fla., who pilfered from at least 19 institutions in the early
1990s. He took maps that the FBI valued at about $500,000 before being
caught fleeing the Peabody Library of Johns Hopkins University in 1995 with
three maps, a phony university ID card and a notebook with a list of rare
maps and the major libraries that had them in their collections. Police
initially let him go and had to track him down later.

Victims sometimes are reluctant to reveal the crimes or to share information
about them, Campbell said. Secrecy has made pursuing thieves harder.

"Institutions are worried about political embarrassment and the fear that
publicity will encourage further thefts," he wrote in an essay on the topic.

After Bland was caught and the stolen maps recovered, "There was a warehouse
of stuff, and word went out to come get it," Campbell said. Almost no
institutions showed up because, "either they didn't know [that they had lost
items] or didn't come forward because it would be acknowledging that they
lost them."

Some law enforcement agencies also urge secrecy, Campbell said, "believing
that it is easier to catch a thief if he is unaware that the loss has been
discovered."

The secrecy is often misguided, he said. Dealers need to know immediately
what stolen items are out there that might be offered to them. Other
libraries and archives need to know that they might have been robbed or
could be robbed. Police in other jurisdictions need to know the pattern of
thefts so they can be aware.

Not spreading the word of a theft also prevents investigators and others
from noticing patterns or anomalies that might help them prevent theft or
catch thieves.

Those in charge of local rare-document collections said they believed the
measures they have in place are effective. All said they had had no
significant thefts in recent years.

Dabrishus did not want to supply details of the security at collections he
supervises, the Darlington Memorial Library, the Special Collections
Department in Hillman Library, the Archive Service Center, the Stephen
Foster Memorial Library and some small department collections, but he said
most major institutions used electronic surveillance, required patrons to
check bags and coats, and searched bags when patrons leave.

Human monitoring of patrons is probably still the main way of deterring
theft. Priore said he keeps a close eye on people using rare materials.

"It's not far at all from where they sit to where I sit. I'm almost on top
of them. I do not let people go down the stacks. People are never left
unattended. Things are not brought out of this room. And I check things when
I put them back."

Many of the 25,000 or so items in the special collections have greater
historic and research value than monetary value, he said. But the library
does have some gems, a collection of photos of North American Eskimos by
Edward Curtis, and a music manuscript with Johann Sebastian Bach's
handwriting on it.

Similarly, the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Museum has
mostly items of local historical interest, said Betty Arenth, senior vice
president and the head of security. There are valuable items, and everything
is available to scholars.

"For the most valuable things, we use facsimiles. If there is a valuable
original that a person needs to examine, they are accompanied. We bring the
original out to the reader and sit with them," Arenth said. The item or
items are checked after the reader is done.

Thefts over the years make it clear that such security is needed, even when
scholars, librarians and dealers feel that they are friends and colleagues
who share a common love.

It's painful to see the results of "someone mutilating a book to take
something out of it," Priore said.