I almost missed Cronaca’s report of yet more “do-it-yourself de-accessioning” at the V & A museum, which reminded me of this story much closer to home just before Christmas:
£70,000 rare map thief is jailed
Peter Bellwood, a former landscape gardener, stole over 100 rare maps (dating back to the 17th century) from the National Library of Wales’ maps room in 2000, by cutting them out of atlases with a craft knife. He sold them to dealers (it’s unlikely that many will ever be recovered). He was sentenced to 4 1/2 years’ jail at Swansea Crown Court in December. (Personally, I think we should do unmentionable things to him with his own knife.)
NLW was far from being his only target (Danish authorities in particular may want to speak to him when he’s served his sentence here…), but it may at the time have been a particularly enticing one. Compared to the other large archives/research libraries I’ve been to in London, security was pretty lax. There were security guards at the entrance, and cameras in the reading rooms (and the standard no bags rule), but no permanent security presence actually in the reading rooms (periodic patrols, I don’t know how often), nobody ever seemed to be watching the cameras, no checking of possessions on the way in or out, and I’d wander in and out daily without my reader’s ticket ever being checked either (I’m hoping that’s because they knew me, but I’m not so sure).
The staff only realised that NLW might have been targeted after reading that Bellwood was suspected of thefts in European libraries, when they checked the records and found that he had been a visitor, and began to go through the items he’d ordered. (Can you imagine being the archivist opening up those precious rare books to find pages missing, gaping holes?) Bellwood himself said in court that he was not the first person to have got away with such thefts from NLW: alarming, but not at all unbelievable. Of course, 100% security is never possible in such a public building (after all, NLW wasn’t the only victim), but the head librarian himself admitted that it was not good enough. There has since been a review of the security situation; and presumably this was one of the considerations in the design of the new manuscripts and maps room, which opened last October. At least, I’m told that things have indeed been tightened up there. And not before time. Hopefully, I shall be in there before long to see.*
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* Especially as some work I’m positive I did in there last summer has seemingly vanished from my hard drive… WTF? Where have I put this? Don’t say I deleted it by mistake! Did I imagine it? Is my computer eating stuff when I’m not looking? Aaaaargh!