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Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

arstechnica.com

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Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#31

Post by lbriner »

UberFly wrote: post #13

I had to read this line in the article twice: "Initially, the assumption was that the notebooks had been misplaced. Librarians conducted searches over the next two decades..." Two decades :)

I thought the same but I guess if your library has 500,000 items, multiple storage locations and 1000s of people that can borrow things, not always with permission and not always recorded correctly, I can see how you wouldn't want to cry wolf until you had searched everywhere.

Probably 20 years ago, they wouldn't have had all the security and CCTV that we have nowadays because it's so cheap.

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#32

Post by gpderetta »

mattxxx wrote: post #20

The resolution here: Librarian: Happy Easter X feels eerily similar to an ending from a National Treasure / Tomb Raider movie. In fact, I think we can go ahead and assume that some globe-trotting high jinx occurred. Maybe there was a map to the actual Tree of Life?

It will turn out this is a viral marketing campaign for some upcoming action move!

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#33

Post by toyg »

madaxe_again wrote: post #25
ggm wrote: post #22

My mums incomplete thesis in the 70s required access to some letters and she had manuscript hand written notes from John Ruskin amongst others (iron and gall ink destroys paper. The words etch out black rimmed ghosts). We returned them to the library after she died in the 90s. This happens without any conscious effort if you file by the volcano method and she had at least two part-time jobs on the go to her dying day…

Yeah, my best guess is that this is something similar - past academic or librarian decided to take them home for reasons known only to them, and after their death, their embarrassed children, fortunately realising their importance, anonymously returned them. I’ve witnessed similar - elderly neighbour had a set of drawings by Wren that he’d sneak out to show you, but was evasive about their provenance. Turns out the o…

> the museum never even knew they’d had them to go missing

This is increasingly a problem for museums and libraries all over the world. They keep accreting material but their exhibit space is often shrinking, or badly maintained. Security is mostly an afterthought, ungodly amounts of precious artefacts disappear without people realizing for years. This is particularly bad in Europe, where museums are centuries old at this point and often overflow with material.

The solution is probably to somehow link artefacts to RFID tags or similar, or enclose them in boxes with such features, which can be monitored automatically. It's obviously a challenge (you can't just place a sticker on the Gioconda, but if you make it too easy to non-destructively remove it, it's self-defeating; and they already take years to just build their inventories, let alone secure each individual item).

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#34

Post by jokoon »

I wish darwin expressed more opinions about evolution in human civilization, especially about answering Spencer's "survival of the fittest", as it would have helped settle a lot of political talk.

Social darwinism is quite well alive today, when you hear people say that poor people deserve their situation, and that poverty is a normal product of meritocracy.

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#35

Post by Proven »

jokoon wrote: post #34

I wish darwin expressed more opinions about evolution in human civilization, especially about answering Spencer's "survival of the fittest", as it would have helped settle a lot of political talk. Social darwinism is quite well alive today, when you hear people say that poor people deserve their situation, and that poverty is a normal product of meritocracy.

[dead]

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#36

Post by unfocussed_mike »

Shared404 wrote: post #15
batch12 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he stole them to protect them from another plot to steal them for profit. After a 20 year saga, he finally triumphed over his adversary and returned them to their rightful owner.

We need to stop please, or we're gonna give enough material for another National Treasure :P !

It would have to be an International Treasure, because this is The University Of Cambridge, as in the real one in the UK not the belated US knockoff ;-)

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#38

Post by ben_w »

toast0 wrote: post #23
dylan604 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's the true crime, somebody failed to use the Dewey Decimal system!

Library of Congress or death!

The sequel to 1989’s Conan the Librarian: https://youtu.be/mZHoHaAYHq8

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#39

Post by dijonman2 »

ggm wrote: post #22

My mums incomplete thesis in the 70s required access to some letters and she had manuscript hand written notes from John Ruskin amongst others (iron and gall ink destroys paper. The words etch out black rimmed ghosts). We returned them to the library after she died in the 90s. This happens without any conscious effort if you file by the volcano method and she had at least two part-time jobs on the go to her dying day…

> if you file by the volcano method

Is this an organizational methodology?

Re: Mysterious benefactor returns Charles Darwin’s missing notebooks after 20 years

#40

Post by gbear605 »

jokoon wrote: post #34

I wish darwin expressed more opinions about evolution in human civilization, especially about answering Spencer's "survival of the fittest", as it would have helped settle a lot of political talk. Social darwinism is quite well alive today, when you hear people say that poor people deserve their situation, and that poverty is a normal product of meritocracy.

Unfortunately I doubt that Darwin saying more would have prevented that. Perhaps they would call it something else, but more likely they would just ignore it. There are plenty of things that Adam Smith said against modern capitalism, but that doesn’t stop people from holding him up as an icon. (And the same is true for basically every ideology and religion!)
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