'Stolen' art found on nearby shelf. Police keep looking anyway

I had a guy working with me in an IT team once, both doing the same job under an IT Manager.

We noticed things occasionally went missing. A disc here. A component there (RAM, disc, fans, etc.). The disc with the VLK pre-burnt into it one day.

We knew what was happening, but couldn't gather evidence to do anything about it. When he wound himself up to leave of his own accord, our boss dropped-in a sideways mention of the missing things in the course of conversation (no accusation, just "Oh, have you seen the X disc because we can't find it", etc.) Later that week, another casual mention that the VLK installs could be tracked (he wasn't bright enough to know that the tracking wasn't actually that good, especially not without making a lot of fuss with Microsoft, etc.).

The day he did decide to leave, he came in at 5:00am. He was friendly with the caretakers, so they let him in before anyone else. He told them he was working early. By 8:00am, he'd gone and never came back. But that day we found discs and components and VLK discs tucked into odd places where they'd never been before, and where we would have noticed them immediately if they'd been there the day before.

Strange that. Rather that than have to prosecute the guy (which I don't think we'd have done anyway), but it was one of those things that I won't forget. My boss at the time said she got a reference request for him a few weeks later, from a security firm to monitor CCTV for theft, etc. I would love to know exactly what she wrote, but I have a pretty shrewd idea what kind of lines it would have gone down, even if there was no way she could write a direct accusation in it.

Never mis-file on the stacks!

That's why the public generally don't get stack access in a library and have to ask a librarian to get something - if it is mis-filed on the stacks it can take years-to-never to find it again!

No records of any kind

I tried to find out how long this Amy had been in charge, but the website of the BPL mentions no date information for anyone - not the President, not the Board members. No timeline of any kind.

So I am a bit torn when I read that she complains about no records being put in place. Nice to complain when stepping down, dear, but what did you do about it when you were in charge ?

Maybe she did do something, or try to do something, but I can find no record of that either.

In final analysis, however, it is the Board that is ultimately remiss in its duties. Not having a catalog of acquisitions is really a disastrous display of not being aware of their responsibilities.

Catalogue as you go

'A library statement claims that 14 library workers searched through 180,000 of the print stacks' 320,000 items before the missing items were discovered.'

I bet that they didn't catalogue the items as they sifted through them, had they done that they would already be more than halfway through.

They probably just routed through them in no particular order, moving and mixing them as they went along.

I blame that darned Dewey Decimal System.

(hence my suggestion that libraries should file books etc. by size and colour rather than by subject or author - then you could immediately see if one was out of place in the stacks!)

Traditional index system

"The library has no central inventory list of what it owns, and there is no catalogue of each item. "

'Ask Old Joe, he knows where everything is'

"Can't, he was seen as being an unproductive operative . . ."

says

I lent them that Durer way back, must be twenty years ago. If they are not going to display the thing I shall have to ask them to give it back :)

Police keep looking anyway

In next week's news:

"Police Shoot Unarmed Black Man Running From Boston Library".

A police spokesman said that although no crime had been comitted, they were there anyway, and it wouldn't do to have officers standing around doing nothing. The black man had been seen being suspiciously quiet in the library, hiding his face in a book, and leaving with a bag that could easily have contained stolen items rather than borrowed books. Better safe than sorry, eh?

So the police are continuing to inventory and figure out "what's missing", even though there's no need?

Good opportunity for them to ensure a whole bunch of stuff _is_ missing (and never recorded as such).

Unfortunately... not joking. :(

"a system in which her predecessors voraciously acquired collections for the library, but didn’t keep records to accompany them."

And now we know what the head of the NSA did at his previous job.

this library sounds like it belongs to one of those Swiss Banks that was so friendly with the germans, and always claim they can't track the origins of what they have....

A prominent figure in the library community had this to add: "Ook!"

Well worth a trip to the library if you are in Boston. Not just a great building, but the restaurant does good food and an excellent afternoon tea; a bargain compared to London prices.