9 ms·

A Rare-Book Thief Who Looted College Libraries in the ’80s

107 points by ilamont 9y ago

LyndsySimon 9y ago
This reminds me of Mauricio Aguirre, who stole quite a bit of money by deception from people in the high-end fountain pen world: http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/9771-fraud-writ-large-con-man-roils-world-of-fountain/ http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/9771-fraud-wri...
- dang 9y ago
  Less glamorous, but more bibliographic, was the guy who wrote the novel from which Kubrick made Full Metal Jacket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hasford#Library_books_theft_charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hasford#Library_books_t...
readhn 9y ago
This is similar to a hacker who finds a bug in banks security system and exploits it for personal financial gain. What would be great if they pardoned the guy in exchange for his service to improve library security around the country so that the next guy in the '90s would not steal 5x more books... once case goes public - its just a matter of time before copy cats appear. government is too slow to learn..
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  Nah, once you are stealing books from a public university you have crossed the ethical line. I think crimes against libraries rate up there as some of the worst social or even war crimes, similar to the destruction of ancient historical landmarks. It is good this person can not anymore deprive future generations of readers books and the knowledge they contain.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >> I think crimes against libraries rate up there as some of the worst social or even war crimes, similar to the destruction of ancient historical landmarks. So let me get this straight: you believe that stealing books from libraries is the equivalent of, say, massacring civilians during wars?
    - SamReidHughes 9y ago
      That would be stealing motorcycles, actually.
    - function_seven 9y ago
      Some very interesting thought experiments arise from this. Imagine these rare books are worth $5 million at auction. $5 million can do a tremendous amount of good. It can feed a lot of people, educate a small village from birth to adulthood, save hundreds of lives from Malaria and other mosquito-born diseases, and pay for many other life-saving medical interventions. Should the library sell the books and spend the money on the above items? I know my analogy doesn't quite jive with the civilian-massacre-vs-book-thieving choice. But hopefully it shows just how immensely important libraries are. Had the Library at Alexandria not been destroyed, there's no telling how much earlier our civilization would have advanced to the relatively peaceful time we live in now. I guess the difference between then and now is that we have the ability to digitize all these rare works. That should be one of the highest priorities for our civilization these days. Get them digitized and replicated. There's still the storage medium problems, but with enough replication, we can hopefully ensure the durability of all that information nonetheless.
      - true_religion 9y ago
        Yes. Knowledge is important... particularly old books are much less so. I wouldn't really mind it if all the knowledge of the library of Alexandria were preserved due to backups located 20 miles away, whilst the old originals burned.
        function_seven 9y ago
  - ohquu 9y ago
    Yeah, I'd say it goes something like this: 1. Rape and pillage of settlements. 2. Using child soldiers. 3. Stealing books from libraries. 4. Deploying poisonous weapons on civilians.
    - koolba 9y ago
      I honestly can't tell if that list is in ascending or descending order.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Not everything is a teachable moment. Thieves should get in trouble for thievery.
  - readhn 9y ago
    he got in trouble for it. now how useful is it just putting him in jail and wasting tax money vs using his skills to make it impossible for the next guy to commit these crimes? "Catch me if you can" story rings a bell here.
- true_religion 9y ago
  You could do both. In many cases, criminals bargain to have shortened but still significant services, in exchange for that sort of public service.
supernumerary 9y ago
Larcenous provenances are very common when dealing in antiquities. I imagine much of the looting be it - from public libraries or ancient cities is justified with the thought: 'I simply value it more.'
Mz 9y ago
Shinn’s motel room contained 26 stolen books and a file full of inventory cards for another 154 volumes. He was well-educated in book history, restoration and binding, and the tools of his trade filled the room: color-stained cloths and Q-tips with jars of shoe polish, used to color-match and conceal library markings on book spines. I was raised with a certain respect for books, but my ex was a great deal more of a bibliophile than I am. He set a very high bar for how to handle and store books carefully and respectfully. Our home was full of little bibliophile accessories, like bookmarks and book darts and special magnifying glasses. The above paragraph strikes a certain horror in me and makes me imagine my ex being inspired to violence in the face of it.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  > The above paragraph strikes a certain horror in me So you prefer a library's handling of a book over a restoration? I'm not trying to defend the guy's actions - I just find your reaction curious. As a bibliophile myself (though certainly not one like your ex - I certainly wasn't aware of such a thing as "book darts", and I certainly know nothing about "special magnifying glasses"), who along with my wife own a quite large collection of fiction and non-fiction books, I find that - while I understand the purpose - libraries tend to treat books poorly (to a certain extent) in the effort to catalog and preserve them; however, without these efforts, the books couldn't be shared and cataloged properly. Things have gotten better with the addition of barcodes (I wonder if hi-density QR codes have been used?), but practices of the past still linger. Shinn's efforts - though put to the purposes of deception and fraud - to an extent possibly made the books more aesthetically pleasing. If there is "horror" to be considered, it would be whether or not doing what he did caused ruin to the book, which would depend on his skills and the book of course. For instance, having the original pages, even with markings, is likely of more value than having restored pages, though the restored pages might be better to look upon (and he must have been able to do and exceedingly fine job, in order for the books to pass the scrutiny of collectors and such paying top-dollar for the books). It's really too bad he went this route with his life; given the little I know from this article, it sounds like his talents could have been most useful for book restoration and preservation efforts...
  - 9y ago
13of40 9y ago
Not going to say exactly where, just in case it's still like that (which I doubt, because this is a story from the early 90's), but... When I was a teenager, I used to skip school a lot and spend time in and around the university library that was several blocks away from the high school. They had maybe four floors of books, and they were protected by the same kind of anti-shoplifting tag system they use in stores now. The basement floor had a section of the library that hadn't yet been upgraded from the Dewey Decimal System, and if you hunted around, you could find books from the 1700s or earlier. At any rate, they had two security flaws that would have made it very easy to loot: First, they were apparently giving priority to new books while installing security tags, and the vast majority of the books in the "old" section didn't have them. Second, they'd inexplicably rerouted traffic inside the lower section such that you could get to the rest of the library via one route without being scanned, but you could pass through a scanner via another route, without ever leaving the secure area. So the scam would be to root around and find an ancient and valuable tome in the old section, exit to the rest of the library, then come back in the other direction to test whether it would trigger the alarm. If it did, you'd just explain that you were returning from one of the upper floors. If it didn't, then you could throw the book in your backpack and walk out the front door with it. (Needless to say, I took the square route in life and never became a dark and sinister merchant of purloined books.)
- dingaling 9y ago
  My university's library had 12 floors with a sensor at the ground level at the only non-emergency exit. However having been built in the 1960s without air conditioning it had top-hinged opening windows. I saw quite a few students over the years simply opening a window on one of the lower floors and dropping a book down to an accomplice standing outside. The replacement library is entirely air-conditioned with non-opening windows!
  - bobsil1 9y ago
    Heard of slimy high school debaters doing this at the local college library, to block opponents from getting evidence against their case. Private prep school kids, sadly.
Lyaserkiev 9y ago
A book thief in Brazil who stole 303 books, the 27 most expensive ones are worth between USD 120k and USD 160k. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=pt-BR&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbrasil.estadao.com.br%2Fnoticias%2Frio-de-janeiro%2Cufrj-sofre-o-maior-furto-de-livros-raros-do-brasil%2C70001757824&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev...

107 points by ilamont 9y ago

This reminds me of Mauricio Aguirre, who stole quite a bit of money by deception from people in the high-end fountain pen world: http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/9771-fraud-writ-large-con-man-roils-world-of-fountain/ http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/9771-fraud-wri...

dang 9y ago
Less glamorous, but more bibliographic, was the guy who wrote the novel from which Kubrick made Full Metal Jacket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hasford#Library_books_theft_charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hasford#Library_books_t...

readhn 9y ago

This is similar to a hacker who finds a bug in banks security system and exploits it for personal financial gain. What would be great if they pardoned the guy in exchange for his service to improve library security around the country so that the next guy in the '90s would not steal 5x more books... once case goes public - its just a matter of time before copy cats appear. government is too slow to learn..

45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
Nah, once you are stealing books from a public university you have crossed the ethical line. I think crimes against libraries rate up there as some of the worst social or even war crimes, similar to the destruction of ancient historical landmarks. It is good this person can not anymore deprive future generations of readers books and the knowledge they contain.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >> I think crimes against libraries rate up there as some of the worst social or even war crimes, similar to the destruction of ancient historical landmarks. So let me get this straight: you believe that stealing books from libraries is the equivalent of, say, massacring civilians during wars?
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    That would be stealing motorcycles, actually.
  - function_seven 9y ago
    Some very interesting thought experiments arise from this. Imagine these rare books are worth $5 million at auction. $5 million can do a tremendous amount of good. It can feed a lot of people, educate a small village from birth to adulthood, save hundreds of lives from Malaria and other mosquito-born diseases, and pay for many other life-saving medical interventions. Should the library sell the books and spend the money on the above items? I know my analogy doesn't quite jive with the civilian-massacre-vs-book-thieving choice. But hopefully it shows just how immensely important libraries are. Had the Library at Alexandria not been destroyed, there's no telling how much earlier our civilization would have advanced to the relatively peaceful time we live in now. I guess the difference between then and now is that we have the ability to digitize all these rare works. That should be one of the highest priorities for our civilization these days. Get them digitized and replicated. There's still the storage medium problems, but with enough replication, we can hopefully ensure the durability of all that information nonetheless.
    - true_religion 9y ago
      Yes. Knowledge is important... particularly old books are much less so. I wouldn't really mind it if all the knowledge of the library of Alexandria were preserved due to backups located 20 miles away, whilst the old originals burned.
      - function_seven 9y ago
- ohquu 9y ago
  Yeah, I'd say it goes something like this: 1. Rape and pillage of settlements. 2. Using child soldiers. 3. Stealing books from libraries. 4. Deploying poisonous weapons on civilians.
  - koolba 9y ago
    I honestly can't tell if that list is in ascending or descending order.
draw_down 9y ago
Not everything is a teachable moment. Thieves should get in trouble for thievery.
- readhn 9y ago
  he got in trouble for it. now how useful is it just putting him in jail and wasting tax money vs using his skills to make it impossible for the next guy to commit these crimes? "Catch me if you can" story rings a bell here.
true_religion 9y ago
You could do both. In many cases, criminals bargain to have shortened but still significant services, in exchange for that sort of public service.

supernumerary 9y ago

Larcenous provenances are very common when dealing in antiquities. I imagine much of the looting be it - from public libraries or ancient cities is justified with the thought: 'I simply value it more.'

Mz 9y ago

Shinn’s motel room contained 26 stolen books and a file full of inventory cards for another 154 volumes. He was well-educated in book history, restoration and binding, and the tools of his trade filled the room: color-stained cloths and Q-tips with jars of shoe polish, used to color-match and conceal library markings on book spines. I was raised with a certain respect for books, but my ex was a great deal more of a bibliophile than I am. He set a very high bar for how to handle and store books carefully and respectfully. Our home was full of little bibliophile accessories, like bookmarks and book darts and special magnifying glasses. The above paragraph strikes a certain horror in me and makes me imagine my ex being inspired to violence in the face of it.

cr0sh 9y ago
> The above paragraph strikes a certain horror in me So you prefer a library's handling of a book over a restoration? I'm not trying to defend the guy's actions - I just find your reaction curious. As a bibliophile myself (though certainly not one like your ex - I certainly wasn't aware of such a thing as "book darts", and I certainly know nothing about "special magnifying glasses"), who along with my wife own a quite large collection of fiction and non-fiction books, I find that - while I understand the purpose - libraries tend to treat books poorly (to a certain extent) in the effort to catalog and preserve them; however, without these efforts, the books couldn't be shared and cataloged properly. Things have gotten better with the addition of barcodes (I wonder if hi-density QR codes have been used?), but practices of the past still linger. Shinn's efforts - though put to the purposes of deception and fraud - to an extent possibly made the books more aesthetically pleasing. If there is "horror" to be considered, it would be whether or not doing what he did caused ruin to the book, which would depend on his skills and the book of course. For instance, having the original pages, even with markings, is likely of more value than having restored pages, though the restored pages might be better to look upon (and he must have been able to do and exceedingly fine job, in order for the books to pass the scrutiny of collectors and such paying top-dollar for the books). It's really too bad he went this route with his life; given the little I know from this article, it sounds like his talents could have been most useful for book restoration and preservation efforts...
- 9y ago

13of40 9y ago

Not going to say exactly where, just in case it's still like that (which I doubt, because this is a story from the early 90's), but... When I was a teenager, I used to skip school a lot and spend time in and around the university library that was several blocks away from the high school. They had maybe four floors of books, and they were protected by the same kind of anti-shoplifting tag system they use in stores now. The basement floor had a section of the library that hadn't yet been upgraded from the Dewey Decimal System, and if you hunted around, you could find books from the 1700s or earlier. At any rate, they had two security flaws that would have made it very easy to loot: First, they were apparently giving priority to new books while installing security tags, and the vast majority of the books in the "old" section didn't have them. Second, they'd inexplicably rerouted traffic inside the lower section such that you could get to the rest of the library via one route without being scanned, but you could pass through a scanner via another route, without ever leaving the secure area. So the scam would be to root around and find an ancient and valuable tome in the old section, exit to the rest of the library, then come back in the other direction to test whether it would trigger the alarm. If it did, you'd just explain that you were returning from one of the upper floors. If it didn't, then you could throw the book in your backpack and walk out the front door with it. (Needless to say, I took the square route in life and never became a dark and sinister merchant of purloined books.)

dingaling 9y ago
My university's library had 12 floors with a sensor at the ground level at the only non-emergency exit. However having been built in the 1960s without air conditioning it had top-hinged opening windows. I saw quite a few students over the years simply opening a window on one of the lower floors and dropping a book down to an accomplice standing outside. The replacement library is entirely air-conditioned with non-opening windows!
- bobsil1 9y ago
  Heard of slimy high school debaters doing this at the local college library, to block opponents from getting evidence against their case. Private prep school kids, sadly.

Lyaserkiev 9y ago

A book thief in Brazil who stole 303 books, the 27 most expensive ones are worth between USD 120k and USD 160k. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=pt-BR&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbrasil.estadao.com.br%2Fnoticias%2Frio-de-janeiro%2Cufrj-sofre-o-maior-furto-de-livros-raros-do-brasil%2C70001757824&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev...