[CPProt.net] Police search for missing magazine

[Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton Cremers)]

May 4, 2005

Police search for missing magazine
By Eric Chima 

University police are continuing to investigate the theft of a 1965 copy of
Electronics Magazine from the Grainger Engineering Library on April 12 - one
day after electronics giant Intel offered to pay $10,000 to anyone with a
copy, University police officials said Monday.

Lieutenant Dave Nelson of University police refused to comment on what
progress the police had made in the investigation, but said they hope to
have concrete information by the end of the week.

The magazine was discovered missing April 13, when librarian Mary Schlembach
saw Intel's listing on eBay and decided to pull the issue from the shelves.

"We had a bunch of staff and grad students go around the building to look
for it, and we weren't able to find it," Schlembach said. "It was on the
shelf upstairs, so anybody could go up there, so long as they found the call
number."

The issue had sat on the shelf for 40 years until Intel became interested,
Schlembach said.

Intel spokesman Manny Vara said the company wanted to purchase the magazine
to put it in the company museum. In the issue, an article written by Intel
co-founder Gordon Moore introduced Moore's Law, which stated that the number
of transistors on a computer chip would double every year for the next 10
years. The law has since become an integral part of the computer chip
industry.

Vara said Intel would not have been interested in the University's copy
because its spine had been cut and bound together with five other issues of
the magazine. The company has since found a seller in the United Kingdom and
pulled its eBay listing.

The library still has another copy of the magazine, which will be kept under
lock and key in the rare book room, Schlembach said. Students wishing to
view the magazine will have to ask a librarian to retrieve it for them.

The University of Toronto had their copy stolen as well, and the
Universities of Michigan, Stanford and Santa Cruz all had to lock their
copies away, Schlembach said. She said Intel went about buying the magazine
the wrong way.

"You can find a book dealer that will find the magazine for you for the
right amount of money," Schlembach said. "That's a better way of doing this
than putting out there that you'll pay $10,000 for an issue of the journal
because the first place people will look is the library ... They should have
found a different way of finding these things. It would have been better for
everybody."

But Vara said other methods had not worked for Intel.

"We didn't just start looking for this magazine," Vara said. "Our museum was
looking for a copy of this for a long time through their normal channels,
and they were unable to find anything at all. That's when we came up with
the idea (of looking on) eBay, because it seems like if you look on there,
there's someone out there in the world that has it."

Nelson said libraries were high-theft areas but usually not for University
property.

"Usually it's students' things - books left unattended, laptops, things like
that," Nelson said. "The University has a lot of rare books, but there
aren't a lot of thefts."

Vara said Intel never thought their listing would cause problems for
libraries.

"We were being very careful with that. In fact, in the posting on eBay we
had very specifically said that we would not buy library or museum copies
unless those organizations themselves said they wanted to sell it," Vara
said. "We certainly weren't looking to create any trouble." 

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