Rare book experts join forces to stop tome raiders

To me this also suggests that if you own or control one of these texts that its literally your duty to the rest of humanity to make sure it's scanned and available for free and infinite copying SOMEWHERE.

We might lose track of the digital version but without it it's inevitable that these volumes will decay and be lost forever.

What is the the general ethical stance about this in the rare book community?

If budget is a problem, scan a couple, sell them, and use the proceeds to scan the rest.

Allow me to explain with an example literally from a few days ago. I turned up in Madrid for a few days, and visited the national library wanting to see what they held both in terms of materials regarding the area of China I am compiling a history on, and in terms of early Spanish records of island Southeast Asian (eg. Philippines) multihull vessels like the vinta.

I am forced to go through airport-like security, have my face recorded on an Axis IP-based CCTV camera, sent to a room with three enormous desks each with an official library bureaucrat. I explain my case, and am rapidly informed that should I wish to view anything at all before 1950 then I must apply for a research card. Sure! What does that require? Photo ID - passport, check. Proof of address - what? Bank statement accepted, download one, OK, check. Proof you are from an inexplicit list of recognized national, educational or cultural institutions. I'm an admin for Wikipedia, writing articles specifically on traditional multihull vessels that have hundreds of thousands of pageviews and have been front page featured, but that didn't seem to count. They wouldn't let me in. The 'librarian' (who I feel deserves no such title) actually went so far as to attempt to 'explain' to me - "You see, it's like a club. The universities, the libraries, ...".

That very same night, I had dinner after visiting a diplomat in their home. Some friends of theirs were also present, one of whom a reigning library science academic of repute within that field in Madrid and Spain. I explained the horrible experience I had attempting to dedicate some of my minimal time in the city to using their national library. In return, it was explained that the difficulty of using the place is a direct response to the theft of a number of extremely rare texts some years ago, over which people lost their jobs. The problem is frequent, and even international academics all face it. I was of course also offered a letter of reference, but did not have enough time left in the city to visit a second time... so the resources remain unconsulted. (The irony of the fact that we dined on Mahgreb cuisine was not lost on me: the former Muslim rulers of Cordoba/Andalusia were great sponsors of libraries, translation and learning in general.)

Moral of the story, then, is perhaps that the real loser is the public: paying for increased security, losing access to the stolen items, but critically - being denied access at all for legitimate inquiry, thereby making a mockery of the purpose of the institutions in the first place.

The best possible thing would be to digitize the originals... this removes the need to visit by making them more accessible, allows backups to secure against disaster, theft or loss by other means, and increases the value of the originals (because people know they exist, cite and use them). British Library want some godawful amount like 400GBP to photograph old images they hold. It's daylight bloody robbery, especially coming from these colonial countries that stole their damn holdings. The EU should force libraries to digitize this stuff.