If the thefts from the Royal Library, in Denmark, is anything to go by, I would look into past librarians. Especially those that have retired. https://www.liberquarterly.eu/articles/10.18352/lq.7874/
Yes, that's unfortunately a well-established pattern :( https://www.capcollections.org.uk/news_events/foxes-in-hen-h...
Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
81–90 of 123 posts
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#82Am I right in thinking they lost them for 20 years but were only certain this week? Or did they only report it this week?
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#83Luckily: "The two Darwin notebooks had previously been digitised and their content is available online." . University of Cambridge has a bit more on their "appeal" site ( https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/DarwinAppeal ) The digitized notebooks are available: [1] https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00121/1 [2] https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00122/1 Also, yesterday was the anniversary of the release of On the Or…
This is good to hear, and a reminder of how important it is to keep backups of everything.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#84I'm curious if there have been any tech advances in tracking valuable objects in like rare books, sketches, paintings, etc. that are currently actually used by institutions or considered a best practice. Whether it's RFID chips, Bluetooth tags, security cameras that do "book recognition", or something else. Heck, even something as simple as a barcode per object, shelf, cart and holding area, and you've got to scan th…
My question to this solution would be: do you have to modify the book in some way? Would we want to potentially ruin a book to do that? If the solution is easily removable then does it help? We should digitize as much as possible and background check the heck out of librarians it seems to me.
The books are already modified by the libraries adding various ownership markings. The thieves will of course remove those markings before selling the books on, which causes far more and more obvious damage than the markings themselves.
The benefit of something like RFID tags is that the thieves would need to remove the tags on-site to avoid detection, rather than at their leisure.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#85> They were taken to a temporary studio, which at the time was in a temporary building in the grounds of the university library because building work was taking place.
Given how small and inconspicuous they are, is it possible they simply got thrown away in the midst of the construction? Perhaps when the temporary building was disassembled?
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#86disturbing that when I read "20 years ago", I first thought "wow, they stole it in 1970", then I read "The notebooks were last seen in November 2000.." then the penny suddenly dropped
Something about this year finally caused me to internalize that it is 2020.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#87I wonder if a 'google streetview' like system could be used to find library books that have been misfiled. A robot drives around the shelves taking photos of the books on the shelves, those are then matched to what is expected to be found in that section, obviously there will be some without names or labels on the spines - but hopefully not many. But it can atleast say there are 4 unknown books and 3 unaccounted for…
They do this is some parking garages. Especially long term (airports) something drives around and reads all the license plates. Easier than books but same idea.
I don't know how common this is, but here in The Netherlands, such license plate reading cars are driving through the streets to fine owners with parking tickets.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#88I'm curious if there have been any tech advances in tracking valuable objects in like rare books, sketches, paintings, etc. that are currently actually used by institutions or considered a best practice. Whether it's RFID chips, Bluetooth tags, security cameras that do "book recognition", or something else. Heck, even something as simple as a barcode per object, shelf, cart and holding area, and you've got to scan th…
My question to this solution would be: do you have to modify the book in some way? Would we want to potentially ruin a book to do that? If the solution is easily removable then does it help? We should digitize as much as possible and background check the heck out of librarians it seems to me.
Our local town library use RFID tags, eg stuck down the spine of a book.
Presumably for expensive books an anti-tamper case like supermarkets use for expensive items (acrylic box with radio-tag) would interfere with opportunistic theft. IIRC or library use such boxes for DVD movies and PC Games.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's unfortunately a well-established pattern :( https://www.capcollections.org.uk/news_events/foxes-in-hen-h...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/theft-carnegie-l...
Is there any news on what percent of the collection has been recovered? What a sickening crime...
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do this is some parking garages. Especially long term (airports) something drives around and reads all the license plates. Easier than books but same idea.
I don't know how common this is, but here in The Netherlands, such license plate reading cars are driving through the streets to fine owners with parking tickets.
UK use vehicle-mounted ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) to catch those not paying their vehicle license fees.
Is it just time-limited parking infractions they're looking for, or does it do tickets for parking in the wrong zone (like resident-only parking)?