A door at a Swedish library was accidentally left open | Hacker News Reader

A door at a Swedish library was accidentally left open

zmescience.com

138 pointsTomte104 comments

I recently moved with my family to an appartment in the city. My wife and I have three children under the age of ten. One big benefit that we did not see in advance is that the public library is now in walking distance to our new home. It already has become a habit to go there with the kids and join the regular reading time.

The reading time is performed by a volunteer who usually reads out one book to the attending children. Often this is even done in two languages.

The kids meet their friends there and enjoy the stories read. We parents enjoy the silence and opportunity to stroll through all the bookshelves.

A public library really is a special place. Its atmosphere is hard to describe.

When my children were much younger, we went quite regularly to the local library, and our schedule coincided with that of another family, to the point where their youngest, when told that they were going to the library stated that he was looking forward to seeing my daughter --- when cautioned that she might not be there he declared, "We will see her, Jessica _lives_ at the library."

I miss going so regularly, and keep meaning to build it into my schedule --- apparently there are some libraries which have apartments:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/inside-the-new-york-pu...

(which is about the one thing which would make me consider being in NYC for an extended period of time)

>Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.

--- Anne Herbert

Yeah, I've always loved libraries. The amount of stuff you can learn is mind-boggling, and the environment/atmosphere encourages delving right in. I still distinctly remember when my local library started carrying CD-ROMs... I mean, I had the internet, but it was very slow, and suddenly I could borrow these games/"edutainment"/educational software... So awesome. For some time my friend had no internet connection and we'd go to the library together and browse stuff, discuss what we found, etc. .. Such a great place for people to grow their knowledge and understanding of the world (and whatever they are interested in). <3

What you describe is wonderful. The problem is that in some places, social conditions degrade the library experience. I was an ardent user of local public libraries from childhood until about a decade ago, when the libraries had taken on the role of homeless shelters and going there felt unhealthy.

Recently, we were at a resort in Switzerland. Arguably one of the safest countries on earth. But: as we exited the swimming pool house, our umbrella was gone. I said „what an irony, the first time we have something stolen is in Switzerland“.

Two hours later, the umbrella was again where we had left it: someone must have borrowed it to protect themselves/their children from heavy rain. We understood why there were no cctvs anywhere: they were not needed.

Thefts at train stations and bike thefts are very common in Switzerland.

Japan is by far much safer than any European country.

There's a saying that as soon as you leave your bike at a train station, it belongs to the public.

I usually joke, when someone has their bike stolen, that they have just gained membership in the local, involuntary bikesharing community, and thus can help themselves to a another bike from the bike parking.

Japan is quite safe, but has an organized crime problem.

Where does ‘organized crime’ intersect with Japan society at large if theft is low in Japan? Prostitution and gambling? I’d be surprised if you said drugs, because of the slippery slopes in drug addiction.

Yeah, Americans idealizing Euro countries or cultures, especially the nordic and germanic countries are really annoying. Please leave your bike unlocked at any major Swiss train station and see what happens. Or take a walk at night around Rosengård in Malmö and come back to tell if you actually felt safe there. It's always the same story: "I went to this upscale hotel where everyone is a wealthy tourist and travelled to the most commonly visited tourist spots and nobody stole my wallet / watch / umbrella. Amazing people." It's like those people have a psychological need for a fairytale country to exist where everyone is a "perfect" citizen and no harm has ever been done to anyone so they can daydream about living there. If you left a library unlocked in a wealthy NY or Boston neighborhood I'm sure that you'd get a pretty similar outcome like the one mentioned in the article. It's not a mystery that readers are usually domesticated and fairly educated people who won't steal books, even in the US.

We once visited the MAMCO museum, in Geneva, all on our own, opening every door, manually turning on the lights in every room we entered, etc. I think we stayed over an hour without meeting any staff or triggering any alarm.

It sounds a bit ambiguous, have you in the end triggered the alarm and had to run from the staff or have you made it out with your ill gotten gains?

The largest art robbery that never was.

In all seriousness, we just made our visit and left, like the people in the article. At some point we even backtracked to the entrance to check for opening hours. No one. No alarm. Only the two of us and a very nice contemporary art collection.

Anecdotal. The largest unsolved art robbery that ever was ( I think this is still true) was at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston.

Details here (Smithsonian)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-things-know-a...

Excerpt:

From start to finish, the biggest art heist in modern history lasted just 81 minutes. At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers walked into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They overpowered two unsuspecting night security guards, then duct-taped their victims to a pipe and a workbench in the museum basement.

“Gentlemen, this is a robbery,” the criminals announced.

The pair proceeded to remove 13 treasured artworks on display in the lavishly decorated gallery, smashing the protective glass of two Rembrandt paintings and cutting the canvases from their gilded frames. Just over an hour later, the thieves made off with a staggering collection of art that’s valued today at $500 million.

End excerpt.

FWIW, like many things, Isabella Steward Gardner is for sale on eBay.

DDG says:

Isabella Stewart Gardner - Isabella Stewart Gardner Sold Direct on eBay.

Thank you!

>We understood why there were no cctvs anywhere: they were not needed

Most likely because CCTV cameras are a legal privacy concern for which you need a license so you're not allowed to install CCTV cameras everywhere you like just because you own the business. It's the same in Germany and Austria.

At my local gym there's a warning at the entrance saying that there's CCTV surveillance on the property and that by entering the premises you accept their surveillance rules and they also post the authorization number for their surveillance license.

IMHO the problems usually occur when people don't feel like part of the community and being at a resort in CH should probably create some kind of sense of community as wouldn't be any outsiders since everyone there will be there because they want to be there(unlike places like Airports or roadside coffees where most people will be there because they needed the services in between the places they would like to be at).

Even in the most shitty neighbourhoods, the place can be quite safe for residents if there's no high churn rate.

When you pay $500 a night at a resort, your population is a tad different than taking the train/bus/tram.

I dare you to walk in Geneva/Lausanne/Zürich with your backpack opened, hell even close and walking like a tourist. or with a short sleeve shirts and an expensive watch (read Rolex+ pricing).

I've had a digital camera returned to me, which I've forgotten in the train in Zurich. Nigh impossible back home. I've done my share back and returned wallets and iphones to police officers.

Living in such good moral environment makes also newcomers better people.

If you leave your wallet on the ground in a park in SF, the chances you’ll get it back are probably pretty high. If you leave it in your locked car, your car will probably get broken into.

Thieves are strategic. They’re not looking around in parks for lost wallets, nor are they going to libraries hoping they can lift a bunch of unattended books.

I don't want to give them any ideas, but some books are expensive/of high value/rare/etc.

The trick is knowing which ones, and how to find a buyer.

Career thieves wouldn't scour a park for wallets, no, but many people are opportunistic thieves. If they happen upon money with no one in sight, they'll just take it, without thinking it's a big deal.

The case in the article matches the second model, not the first. Hundreds of people realised they were in a library with no staff. Two-hundred books were taken out, presumably without anyone having to log their names. That would have made it extremely easy for them to just keep the books. But they were returned.

Having few opportunistic thieves is, one would think, a good sign of societal trust and well-being.

I'll just mention that security at UK university libraries is fairly tight, I know people who have accidently taken out books without logging them, and just kept them, and there have been cases at Cambridge where quite high-value books have gone missing.

> Two-hundred books were taken out, presumably without anyone having to log their names.

The article states that every book taken out was returned. I see two alternatives:

1. The staff conducted a full inventory a couple of weeks after the incident and confirmed that every book is still there. (By the way, at what rate are books smuggled out even during regular opening hours?)

2. The books that were taken out were borrowed against a library card using some sort of self-checkout station.

I find option 2 much more likely, which meant the names were logged.

Perfectly possible, but if there were no staff, that means that the denizens of Gothenburg were conscientious enough to police themselves. They checked out their books even though they probably could have just walked out the front door with them.

At least here in northern Finland you could already do that even with staff present. Everyone goes in with backpacks or bags and with self service there's no way to actually monitor if all the books were properly checked out.

If that's the case, then they cannot know that all items taken were returned.

They can only know that the items checked out were.

>but many people are opportunistic thieves.

My father used to think that. Turns out it's mostly untreated paranoid shizophrenia creating self fulfilling prophecies.

This has been tested by researchers: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734141432/what-dropping-17-00...

Criminologist here -- both baron and Emma are right! (The question is moreso in terms of rates, you can find anecdotes confirming either behavior.)

Two of my favorite related articles:

- Serendipity in robbery target selection[1]. Interviews with chronic robbers talks about how they cruise around looking for marks. They are strategic though in their "foraging".

- The role of territoriality in crime prevention: A field experiment[2]. Experiment with leaving a $10 gift card on a desk in Uni library. (So similar to here, unlikely people going to library intending to steal.) There were thefts - in one condition 1/30 people who passed by nicked the card.

Since a single chronic offender can commit many crimes, the current patterns of car break ins in cities are IMO likely driven by a small number of "professional" offenders, moreso than victim behavior.

[1] http://www.d-ddaily.com/images/6-1-15_Serendipity%20in%20Rob...

[2] https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1301910/1/Wortley_%26_...

About 7 or 8 years ago I lost my wallet in Golden Gate Park while tripping incredibly hard on LSD. I had been climbing around the trees and scrub for hours, so I was certain it was gone for good. A few months later it showed up in my mail halfway across the country (driver's license address). I was astonished, grateful, and wished I could send a reward or thanks — but it was literally just my wallet in a bubble mailer with $30 in cash untouched.

since you mention climbing trees and $30 in the wallet, the comedian Ismo made the joke that when he had his wallet stolen, he ran after the thief until he realized after some time of running that he had just gotten as much exercise as spending the same time at the gym, except that the gym would have cost him more than the $40 or $50 that were in the wallet.

> They say a reader does not steal and a thief does not read.

Profound or contrapositive [1]?

P = reader

Q = not steal

not P = does not read

not Q = Theif

P - > Q

not Q - > not P

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition

Yes, on the logical level, the quoted passage is redundant: for the reason you indicate, either "a reader does not steal" or "a thief does not read" suffices by itself -- at least if stealing a book one time makes you a thief (as opposed to thieves' being defined as people who steal habitually).

It's not uncommon in Nordics to have satellite libraries with mainly self service hours where there's no staff present but you need to swipe / scan your library card to get in.

"I have a proof for this conjecture, but the last person to swipe into the library filled up all of the margins with doodles."

I just don’t understand the line, “To date, all the books have been returned.”

Are they still expecting tomorrow that some of these books will no longer have been returned?

I means that regularly books are lost in libraries for various reasons, but for this particular time range, (surprisingly) all were returned

Books get different return-by dates based on their popularity in Sweden, so some have to be returned in a e.g. week, some in a month. So perhaps they just meant that none of the return deadlines have been missed so far?

Did they even say when this event occurred?

Nov 1st

4 November, actually. All Saints’ Day gets a bit confusing in Sweden, because there are two of it — one on 1 November, which is not a public holiday, and one on the Saturday after, which is. The one on Saturday tends to catch people by surprise, because most don’t work on Saturdays anyway, so they don’t expect this Saturday to be special, but then it turns out that shops and services they expected to be open are, in fact, closed.

It's not unusual for local libraries in Denmark to be accessible to outside office hours using a library card.

Usually, not at night -- but why close a local library in the evening.

Just require library cards and add video surveillance.

(you milage may vary)

Just what we need, another place with video surveillance to make it even more normalized. Orwell missed only by about thirty years.

Daring today, aren't we?

George Orwell never had to see a homeless person throw a tantrum because the library computers' nanny-ware starting blocking the proxy he used to visit Pornhub.

Orwell probably would have preferred an economic system where you don't have homeless persons to spy on. He actually fought in a civil war to promote such a system.

But he wouldn't be surprised at all that homeless persons would be used as a pretext for spying.

Video cameras in unmanned libraries definitely don't exist in order to spy on people. I can assure you that whatever its other faults, the municipality of Copenhagen is not interested in spying on readers.

Not falling for that again.

Everyone has their sensibilities.

Of all the surveillance methods, this one is nowhere near as intrusive as some others. The recordings will likely be overwritten/erased within weeks, if not sooner. Few operators of such cameras store the resulting video for extended periods of time.

On the other hand, Google probably knows your crush from 2005 and your diagnosis from 2009. This long term surveillance is what really messes with me.

Was true in the past, but out of date today. Cloud connected cameras are the new hotness. Including facial recognition, etc.

Hopefully EU has bans against such things, but even that may not be enough.

Imo it could work like 24/7 gyms: classic operation during normal hours, video&card access for any other time. May as well add some extrafee for access during night

Library's are a public service not a business

Yes, you provide that service as b4 during normal hours and charge a small fee during unusual hours to create a minimal barrier when there's no supervisor, aka charge a fee to provide the 'extra' public service)

Why should you do that? I guess people who have only time at late hours are not the most fortunate in life (e.g. Single Mom's who have to work full time and care for their kid). If they want to educate themselves during late hours I'm completely fine if that costs a little bit more taxes to get them education

It is sort of a fallacy to expect mayhem just because some door is unlocked once. People can happen to sleep or go away on vacation with their home unlocked and the normal result of that is plain nothing happening.

but you also don't have someone visiting your home in that time, help themselves to a snack from the fridge, take a shower and clean up after themselves, and then come back later to replace the snack that they ate.

At least in Finland it wouldn't make much difference if the library is open or not. Even when there's staff, it's up to you to scan the books you take out and the staff doesn't control this at all.

Many similar situations, e.g. self-scanning items in-store and bagging them, where stealing carries essentially zero risk of getting caught, but stealing doesn't happen much.

Yes, I was going to say this. Not sure if the books use any kind of alarm system? Here Im pretty sure they cannot be using it, since you can scan the books up to like 10 at a time via RFC (?) and Ive never seen a magnetic alarm tag being deactivated at that distance.

Also, our local library recently closed down the possibility of entering with your library card at extended times, due to abuse of some kind.

I think there used to be alarms, and in some places there still are the gates and in some books you can see/feel the alarm. But e.g. in the new Oodi library there don't seem to be gates that I'd at least recognize.

https://360.northmanvr.com/F1utgPQ3E0/12117837p&152.57h&75.2...

Here in South Africa we had the 2021 July riots when our ex-president was arrested and supposed to go to jail.

During the riots groups targeted malls and various outlets, basically looting everything in sight except of course for the bookstores which mostly remained untouched.

I long been waiting for the day to use any store anytime I want. I like to do things late night, like going to the groceries or the market, but it's hard to find any shop that is open around 3AM. Never understood, that after strong authentication, why can't I enter a shop, buy whatever I want, then leave.

In Belgium, one supermarket did exactly this.

You can even use your e-ID card to buy products with a minimum age.

Article in Dutch: https://www.colruytgroup.com/nl/over-ons/ondersteunende-acti...

And they did this in mid 2022. Not bad, but the concept is a bit flawed. Hm, there is still room for improvement ;).

I know there are stores like this in Sweden. Haven't been to one myself, but an in-law of mine apparently found it very convenient during her University years.

Makes sense, the date was a holiday, everyone would be going out.

People who'd go to a library during such a time are less likely to want to cause trouble. Not to mention the value of a books aren't very high. You could find a free copy of every library book online.

Not true, I routinely find books in academic research that have never been digitized

usually not in your run of the mill public library though

How about some random young adult novel from 1975 that never got popular? Or an old magazine on microfiche?

Internet people overestimate how much of the world's information has been digitized, imo.

Average library has plenty of books that have not been digitized. On other hand those are not also particularly rare either. So other libraries are very likely to have copies or at least the national one is some countries have one.

More rare or old books tend not to be stored on shelves.

The librarian's name is Elf.

> During that day, 446 people visited the city library. A total of 246 books were borrowed. To date, all the books have been returned.

This whole thing happened less than a week ago, yet every single book borrowed has already been returned?

Thanks for making my day. That has to be the feel-good story of the year!

Is there normally some security system keeping people from just taking books from a library?

In libraries I visit, many books have an RFID tag stuck inside the cover.

Probably easy to circumvent. But enough to keep honest people honest.

Tangentially, is it just me, or is "To date, all the books have been returned." a bit of an awkward sentence? If I were going to use "To date" - I feel like I would use it to indicate there is more to happen at a future date, but in this context, it seems there is nothing left to happen? Not trying to be pedantic or nitpick, genuinely curious if I've been using To date incorrectly.

Considering that this happened last Saturday, and today is Thursday, i.e, it has only been five days (more like four, since it's still early morning, local time, on Thursday) I find it extremely unlikely that all books have been returned by now — surely someone needs a week to get through a book?

My guess: when they wrote the article, they hadn’t all been returned and it read “To date, only half of the books have been returned” or similar. Then it was updated clumsily with s/only half/all/ rather than redoing the sentence.

Yeah, it kinda reads the same as "Thus far, all the books have been returned." Like.. so... just say "Fortunately, all the books have been returned." .. There aren't any more on the way or anything! hahah

All the more so when the value of the observation depends so much on the timeframe involved and the article does not explicitly state when the event happened. Sure, the article is dated 9th November 2023 and it is referring to something that happened on All Saints Day — which hopefully the reader will know is 1st November. But was it 1st November 2023 or 1st November 2003?

It was indeed 2023. Was it so hard to say "Over the following week, all the books were returned.? Not only does it provide more information, but it even makes the story more compelling that the uninformative and useless "to date"!

I thought the same. Another pedantic comment, just for fun:

> It was a quiet revolution [...] “It felt good that everyone behaved exactly as usual "

Not sure how I feel about "revolution" when things don't change.

Perhaps the author is native in Nordic languages, and mis-translated "I dag"?

These things can unfortunately only happen in a uniform society, with aligned values and a shared feeling of solidarity.

> When Anna Carin Elf arrived at her workplace

No knowing what these elves can do. She had probably put a spell on it when she left.

A story of a homogeneous culture that values humility (putting other's needs above your own).

A beautiful story. I love libraries, and they are a great example of ideals in which public institutions can be used for the common good, bringing knowledge and communities together.

If you read the news every day, you might be forgiven for thinking that most people are naturally evil.

In reality the vast majority are actually good, or trend towards acting in a positive manner at the very least.

I've seen two sorts of IRL applications rely on this: Self checkout at stores, and sites like wikipedia and openstreetmap.

Or just western society in general, if you think about it. Most of the time we trust people to do the right thing without oversight.

>act of civil responsibility that spoke volumes, reaffirming the notion that a library is much more than a building; it is a cornerstone of community, education, and trust.

Also kind of like reaffirming that civilization is more than just an organized crowd, and that it can be conducted without overseeing authorities, or without inhumanity is truly possible.

I think that a qualifying factor is if the citizenry is not in a state of distress (homeless, unemployed, unfed, without medical care, etc.)

In the same fashion no one remembers 10 other people politely waiting in line to pay for the groceries - everyone remembers Karen screaming she want to see the manager.

Don’t forget Karen acting out is still not evil just shitty.

I don't tend to frame anyone as good or evil. My judgement is more about whether their actions harm others or do not. In my experience, the majority of people generally don't want to cause harm to others, or don't knowingly intend to. They often do because they are ignorant of how harmful their actions can be (IMO the most common cause of people harming each other), or they may be desperate (as someone in an adjacent comment touched on homelessness/hunger/illness).

It's funny, I've watched these documentaries about this guy going about seeing what kind of scams are ongoing in major cities. Pickpockets, taxis ripping off customers, vendors giving counterfeit change... The guy confronts them and asks them to explain their scheme. Almost universally the thief/scam artist/whatever justifies their actions: "I have to feed my family!" .. These people aren't evil, they're desperate.

Of course there are definitely some real straight-up colossally destructive people out there who engage in seriously despicable acts. I still can't bring myself to call it "evil". I'd rather just understand it (and know how to avoid it). I mean, I was picturing like murderers when I wrote that, but then I realized it equally applies to say, bloodthirsty dictators, or someone who decides to raise a $12 medication to $750. It doesn't help much to label it as evil, but it does help my understanding of the world in which I live to at least try to make sense of it. It's not like they have a little demon on their shoulder.

I don't have a perfect thesis here but I wanted to share my thoughts on that topic.

Most "evil" acts are in fact just selfish. To truly classify something as evil, there needs to be an intent to cause harm.

I'd also argue that desperation is a subset of selfishness.

I feel like a lot of petty crime (like shoplifting and such), is not directly caused by desparation, but a kind of contempt.

Their community failed to make them feel provided for and included, therefore what they are doing is okay: they are only taking what they are “owed”.

It’s not necessarily that they are evil or even that desperate, but rather that their previous interactions with society gave them a warped sense of justice, in which selfish behaviour and stealing is good (when they do it).

You often see this with turnstile jumpers. It’s not that they cant afford the ticket, they just think it should have been free to begin with. its mostly an act of contempt.

“I have to feed my family” is rarely the actual motivation, especially in developed countries.

Oh yeah, I didn't dive deep enough into it but yeah, there's absolutely that aspect of feeling "owed" or otherwise not having sympathy for those they are taking from. Sometimes there's a "I need it more than they do", or "they can easily afford to replace it", or less charitably there can be more of a "they deserve to have their stuff taken", "they're part of the system that ruined my life", a mindset of resentment and entitlement...

I deeply believe that most people are evil.

But also what is the point of stealing few marked books. There really isn't that much money in them and they are quite hard to flip.

Oh now, that's an interesting belief. How did you come to it?

> In reality the vast majority are actually good, or trend towards acting in a positive manner at the very least.

I'd say it's about 50/50.

A significant portion of people don't seem to be good, and need some religious book to tell them how to live their lives so they can approximate being good to the best of their ability.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com