A Rare-Book Thief Who Looted College Libraries in the ’80s | Hacker News Reader

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

atlasobscura.com

107 pointsilamont26 comments

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.)

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!

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.

A truly dedicated thief won't be deterred by limited access points. There's always an element of sociopathy in these people, so they won't think twice about doing something like pulling a fire alarm when they're ready to make off with the loot, so that everybody in the building has to get out fast without being scanned.

It doesn't matter at all to them that they've inconvenienced hundreds or even thousands of people in their determination to get what they want, and that is precisely the weakness they exploit in the standard physical security playbook.

Also back in the 90s, a friend of mine - who was interested in reptiles - used a much less sophisticated method to steal books about snakes. He'd drop them out of an open window and go outside and pick them up.

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.

> 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...

He did things like buy books full of illustrations, took them apart entirely and sold each plate individually because this was essentially untraceable (IIRC). He was not lovingly restoring these books. He was a book predator and the object was financial gain.

My reaction is more to the idea of seeing this stuff and knowing the intent was not at all good. Kind of like the movie scene showing instruments that make it clear the Morlocks eat humans and these instruments are used to kill them, prepare them as meat, etc. I have no fear of, say, knives per se. But in a certain context, it becomes clear what the intent of the instrument is and this can be horrifying.

> So you prefer a library's handling of a book over a restoration?

This is a false dichotomy, but I will nevertheless say that I do prefer a library's approach of treating books as 'living' artifacts that attest to history, rather than being objects of purely aesthetic appreciation.

(Maybe that's also a false dichotomy ;-)

I think we can all agree that they should not be treated as a resource to be strip-mined for profit. Speaking for myself, that extends to the whole process of destroying rare books for their more aesthetically valuable components, even if done legally.

I find it interesting that collectors of various sorts seem to be split on whether restoration is desirable or not. Certain collecting hobbies value originality above all else, and a piece restored in any way would be considered worth less than the same piece in original, unrestored condition. Sometimes certain limited types of restoration or conservation are allowed while either helping or at least not hurting the value of the piece, and other times, a restored piece can be worth more than one in an original but damaged condition.

How does it work with rare books?

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-wri...

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_t...

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.'

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...

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..

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.

>> 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?

That would be stealing motorcycles, actually.

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.

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.

Yeah, the knowledge is the most important part. But there's still the issue of public ownership of valuable items.

Let's assume the entire contents of a rare book—or let's say a famous renaissance painting—is digitized at high quality. Is it a moral failing for a public library or museum to hold on to the work instead of converting it to cash and spending that cash on life-saving initiatives? Is valuing these original works an irrational thing that we humans do? I can't logically argue for keeping the works, yet I think something would be lost if all art was sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds used for charity.

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.

I honestly can't tell if that list is in ascending or descending order.

Not everything is a teachable moment. Thieves should get in trouble for thievery.

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.

You could do both. In many cases, criminals bargain to have shortened but still significant services, in exchange for that sort of public service.

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