Security and Crime Prevention in Libraries

Michael Chaney, Alan F. MacDougall

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429793721
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

First published in 1992, the purpose of this book is to identify and describe the most important factors that must be considered in making decisions about the optimal ways to provide access to information – in short the best way to use the humans, the machines, and the intangible resources known as information, particularly at the organizational level.

In recent years executives have begun to outsource computing and telecommunications functions primarily to control costs. Traditional libraries and information centres have been disbanded in favour of service contracts or outright leasing of staff. Both the private and public sector are examining their information service operations from the point of view of cost effectiveness. Decisions about owning versus leasing of information are being made daily. Decision makers are finding that they must deal differently with funding and budgeting of information systems and libraries than they have in the past.

New paradigms for these service functions already exist. Not only have corporations and governments begun to contract out entire information service operations, but libraries themselves have begun to consider the costs, effectiveness, and implications of outsourcing some of their operations and services.

This book provides a framework for decision-makers to view and review information services within their organizations. Entire units, components of libraries and information centres are defined and untangled so that the widest variety of organizations can analyse their own environments. Although there is a minimal use of library and computing jargon, a short glossary at the end explains terms for which there is no simple English language substitute. Each chapter is accompanied by comments from a broad range of experts in the information field.

1

Changing times? Crime and security as a major issue in libraries

DR F W RATCUFFE

Crime seems to be endemic in society. Libraries, despite the cloistered air which surrounded them in earlier times, have not been exempt from it. Its corollary, security, soon followed and has been enforced or neglected in varying degrees across the centuries. Today the situation is such as to give rise to alarm not simply because thefts cost money but in terms of their cost to scholarship and, all too frequendy, to the nation’s heritage.

The earliest surviving catalogue of the holdings of Cambridge University Library dates from 1424 and lists 122 volumes. All of these manuscripts appear to be donations, as was customary at that time, and theology, religion and canon law predominate, as might be expected.

Oates (1975; 1986) noted in his history of the Library that the Library of today possesses only four of the items listed there. The second earliest extant catalogue was compiled in 1473 and ‘shows 330 volumes disposed in seventeen lectern cases, each of which had hanging at its end a written table of the books it contained’. Of these, 73 are thought to be still in the Library today but Oates points out that already in 1557 when Cardinal Pole’s commissioners drew up their catalogue, they recorded fewer than 200 volumes. Oates, with the tumultuous events of the times in mind, comments that ‘the survival of so many [volumes] is emphatically more remarkable than the loss of the remainder’. Fuller (1655), writing over 300 years earlier expresses a different opinion: ‘This Library formerly was furnished with plenty of choice books, partly at the costs of the aforesaid Archbishop Rotherham, partly at the charges of Cuthbert Tunstall ... But these books by the covetousness of some great ones and carelessness of the Library Loosers (for Library Keepers I cannot call them) are for the most part imbezzled to the great losse of the University, and Learning in Generali’.

The addition of security to the brief of the National Preservation Office (NPO) underlines the reason why preservation rather than conservation is the preferred term in dealing with conservation in general (for further information about the work of the NPO, reference should be made to chapter 12 by Jackson). Looking after the stock certainly extends beyond conservation measures as they are now widely understood and in the context of a university library like Cambridge which has survived, if at times with difficulty, over 600 years of continuous existence, it can be clearly demonstrated. The chaining of the books in the fifteenth century, die employment of night-watchmen, the use of grating or grilles in the library room of 1471, the earliest records of the Library leave no doubt that crime and security was as much a major issue for the Library’s administration then as it is today. On the face of it, given the losses, it may be thought it was not all that effective but, as Oates indicated, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation have much to answer for, not simply in Library but in University terms. It should perhaps also be added that unlike many of the books which disappear today, the whereabouts of many of those absent early volumes is known. Some are in Trinity College Cambridge, some in the Bodleian, some in the British Library, some in the Vatican, among sundry other places.

Theft, mutilation of stock, disasters, these are certainly not new to libraries. There is, however, today a growing sense of urgency and concern about such matters which is quite new among librarians and archivists. Immediate reactions to the unmasking of T. J. Wise’s activities some 55 years ago, for example, were that they were unscholarly, even ungendemanly, rather than downright criminal as they undoubtedly were. Successful forgery as we know from the art world and the late Tom Keating may be dishonest but it is also grudgingly admired, even collectable at high prices. Understandable as that may be, mutilation of manuscripts, that other part of Wise’s activities, can only be regarded as theft of the worst kind. Yet it was not greeted with the same kind of outrage in the library world of the 1930s as it certainly would be today. Moreover, in such cases, the world outside libraries in Britain still seems to be not altogether decided as to their criminal nature, certainly if the response of the courts to thefts from libraries is any guide (see chapter 3by Wrigley). It is somehow a different sort of theft from shoplifting, even an explicable form of theft, some kind of aberration. The Cambridge Magistrates Bench, of which I am a member, illustrates this all too well. Thefts from bookshops are clearly shoplifting and are punished accordingly, usually by significant fines; if persistent, by a custodial sentence. Yet, when an overseas postgraduate research student appeared before the Court having stolen systematically new books on community medicine to the tune of several thousand pounds, she was put on probation for nine months and counselling was advised. The books were all exported for instant reproduction by her printer husband for sale to the trade. There was not even an order made as to compensation for the library. It would have been treated very differently today in the United States, where attitudes to theft from libraries have hardened sharply in the last fifteen years or so (see chapter 2 by Bean).

The growth of conservation awareness in Britain during the last decade found its origins in the concern generated in the United States. Whilst in this country the preservation issue really came to the fore in the ’80s, the USA was already warning about embrittlement and deterioration of collections in the ’60s. Much the same pattern of delayed response may be discerned in regard to crime and security. In the UK it was as late as June 1987 that the first British Library (BL) seminar on library security was held in Novello House, London, under the Chairmanship of Alex Wilson with a carefully selected audience, which included a strong BL representation (see also chapter 12 by Jackson). Its three sessions dealt with the collections and their storage, the users, and the staff. Its proceedings were not published. Two papers, both American, were circulated to the participants, namely, Conditions for the security of rare books, manuscript and other special collections prepared by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (compare this with Guidelines ..., 1982) and Book- line alert: missing books and manuscripts, an online database compiled by the American Book Prices Current. The latter is a more sophisticated version of the arrangements made between the Rare Books Group of the Library Association and the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association in the 1970s. In the UK towards the end of 1989 another conference on security was held in London, this time organised by SCONUL and the NPO (Quinsee and McDonald, 1991).

The published literature on conservation increased rapidly in Britain during the 1980s, though not to the level evident in the USA in the late 1960s and ’70s to which inevitably much reference was made. At present, not surprisingly, much of the research into security in libraries and archives is also to be found published in the USA, relatively little appearing so far in this country (see also chapter 2 by Bean). In one obvious respect the literature takes up anew an age old theme, one very familiar to librarians and archivists alike, that of preservation versus access, of custody versus exploitation. It comes as no surprise that special collections, rare books and manuscripts were the starting point of the security debate both because of their high value and collectability and because of a number of spectacular thefts.

The literature from the viewpoint of the librarian is in general dispiriting when it is not simply alarming. If the trends in the USA are realised here, the outlook is bleak. The American situation is best conveyed by Zeidberg (1987) who begins his article on collection security in libraries:

‘Between 1979 and 1986, American libraries reported thefts and missing materials, including: rare books valued at $500,000 from Harvard’s zoological library; 400 books worth $6,000 from the University of New Hampshire; $20,000 in rare science books from the deGolyer collection at the University of Oklahoma; $1.1 million in plates, engravings, maps, books and manuscripts from the University of Georgia Library in two separate cases; $130,000 in rare books and manuscripts from George Washington University; more than $100,000 in incunabula from Boston College; $200,000 in rare documents from the Thomas A. Edison National Historical Site; $25,000 in books from the general collections at Berkeley; $50,000 in rare numismatic books from UCLA - to name the more widely reported examples. During these years, the Crerar Library thefts were also discovered, and James Shinn was ‘flourishing’ at most of the major research libraries in the country.

‘Who were the thieves? Those who have been identified run the gamut, beginning with outside professionals, such as Shinn, and lesser amateurs, such as Michael Kinashko, apprehended in the Berkeley case. My colleagues and I are more concerned, saddened, and perplexed, however, by the number of students, professors, staff members, and librarians who are implicated in these cases. The University of New Hampshire thief was a graduate student, for example. In the first case at the University of Georgia, a professor of history was apprehended; in the latter case, just now unfolding, a former rare books librarian appears to be a suspect. The head of special collections at Boston College offered incunabula from his library’s collection for an unauthorised sale at Sotheby’s in New York... The case of missing books at George Washington University involved the University Librarian himself.’

The case of James Shinn, referred to in the quotation, is worth a special mention: ‘he was an expert in rare books and took only the best, specialising in lavishly illustrated works on travel, and flora and fauna printed in the 18th and 19th century. He used rare book lists to help find hot titles’ (News, 1982). His treatment in the American courts is also worth noting: ‘his sentence was the maximum: two consecutive ten-year terms’.

Although the American awareness and much of the resulting literature grew in the first instance out of concern for special collections, many other factors have subsequently contributed to its growth. Wyly (1987/ 88) traces the transition from ‘the confidence and security’ of 1957, despite Lawrence Thompson’s Bibliokleptomania of ten years earlier, to the ‘much more acute problem’ of 1987 in the context of the changed library environment. During these 30 years there have been many significant changes - in the methods of teaching history and literature, in the great increases in numbers of users, especially of those seeking access to primary sources, in the huge growth of libraries, in particular of rare books and archives, and not least in the rocketing value of rare books, which become national news items all too often. Pressure on library and archival services arose not from more liberal policies of admission but from the presence of so many more eligible users.

The patterns of use and growth of collections are reflected-no less clearly in the UK although not as yet to the same extent in the literature. University populations, students and staff, have increased by many times in the post Second World War period, to say nothing of the populations of polytechnics and other institutions of higher education. Special collections departments, formerly havens of rest, are now hives of industry. Local Record Offices, at one time backwaters of solid industry, now measure their success by the bodies coming through their doors. Nowhere, however, have staffing quotas risen proportionately. As in the USA, there have been some striking examples of theft. In Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960s a considerable number of important items were recovered by the University Library which had been stolen by a visiting research scholar; other repositories in the North East were also plundered. In 1971, in the University Library of Manchester, the Donner Copy of the Shakespeare First Folio was stolen at approximately 2.30 in the morning from its ‘burglar proof exhibition case. The police believed that the whole operation took less than four minutes, well within the response time of any standard alarm system, that it was highly professional and that the security locks to the building, which had not been forced, posed no problem to any burglar of standing. The book was never recovered and since it is virtually unsaleable on the open market, the theft was almost certainly commissioned by a wealthy collector. In Cambridge in the late ’70s a research student, introduced and vouched for by a Senior Member, stole oriental manuscript material of great value from various libraries in the University. Although the University Library items were recovered, it cannot be said for certain that all College material was retrieved. At the beginning of the 1980s a detailed inspection of the Map Department in the University Library revealed that a number of valuable items had disappeared since the last inspection a decade or so earlier. These were not recovered, although replacements have been secured. It underlined the importance of regular inspections of all special collection materials (see chapter 15 by McDonald). Many more instances from other institutions could be cited. In all those known to me, some element of blame attaches to library staff whose impeccable but naive standards of honesty put them very much at risk when dealing with plausible thieves (see chapter 4 by Houlgate and Chaney).

Vulnerability of stock is not confined to special collections materials: stock on open access is today even more at risk. The cost of new books and the unavoidable presence in a library on open shelves of many expensive books in regular use by readers have contributed to, some might say encouraged, significant losses. There are many other contributory factors, not least the limits of student grants, the high cost of books, the costs of photocopies, the pressures on researchers, the comparative ease of shoplifting in libraries which do not employ store detectives. Mutilation of stock, the removal of articles from periodicals, of illustrations and, at times, the whole text block from monographs is becoming an unfortunate fact of library life. In the USA, where it is deeply entrenched, a number of studies have been made and their findings published. Among the earliest, that by Hendrick and Murfin (1974) establishes a pattern and practice which is all too clearly confirmed by subsequent published studies. Responses to the questionnaire which they issued to students in introductory psychology and social psychology at Kent State University suggest that necessity rather than criminal intent motivates most student mutilations and that much of it could be prevented by a security audit so as to ensure adequate surveillance, warning signs, improved and cheaper copying, reader education and the like (see chapter 15 by McDonald). It is not enough, say Hendrick and Murfin (1974) simply ‘to suffer the problem of mutilation in silence’ or reject it as ‘an insult to the storehouse of civilization’: it ‘drains badly needed financial resources but also frustrates and frequently infuriates [the library’s] patrons’.

Serious and disheartening as this kind of mutilation is - and it would be a mistake to attribute all such acts of mutilation to students - the American experience suggests that it is a disease which can be contained if never quite eradicated. The greater problem lies in dealing with the genuine thief, the person who is motivated by gain. Wyly (1987/88) quotes Belanger’s views expressed at the Oberlin Conference (1983) that thieves ‘are more likely to be students, professors, librarians, staff members, or custodians rather than professional criminals’, that ‘staff, who are insiders, have been held accountable for all but 25% of major library thefts’. This echoes the views of Zeidberg (1987), already quoted, and Mason (1975) who states ‘Bona fide researchers, students and faculty members with impeccable credentials have been thieves, con artists posing as scholars, both dealers, librarians, archivists and even clergymen have been caught stealing... There is strong evidence that many other major thefts have involved insiders.’ Wyly’s (1987/88) account of ‘Major cases of rare book theft’ and ‘Thieves and their methods’ are as readable as they are instructive. The losses recendy uncovered at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, say all that needs to be said in this context.

Not all book losses are deliberate theft: in my experience, at least, books have been removed from the library because the scholar genuinely felt they were more secure in his hands than in the library. This was stated to me by a great benefactor to the University Library in Manchester who returned all library books with interest when he retired from his chair. In Glasgow I was called to the room of a distinguished professor on his retirement to ask how to deal with the books lining his room. I thought he wanted to present them to the library: in fact, he wanted to return them. The professorial executor to a deceased professorial colleague in Manchester rejected my offer to purchase the library of his dead friend because, as he pointed out, none of the books were to be found in the library. When I explained to him why that was, he hastened to accept the money. The founder librarian of Keele University was...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Changing times? Crime and security as a major issue in libraries
• 2 An overview of crime in libraries and information services
• 3 A legal perspective on crime
• 4 Planning and management of a crime prevention strategy
• 5 The role of architecture and design in a security strategy
• 6 Copyright and managements
• 7 Information technology, the law, and the library manager: an introduction
• 8 The social regulatory perspective: data protection
• 9 Intellectual property
• 10 Computer misuse
• 11 Insurance implications of crime and security
• 12 The national framework: the role of the National Preservation Office
• 13 The community approach to crime and security
• 14 Countering crime: a model training programme for managers
• 15 Security policy formulation
• 16 Book detection systems
• Index