Links & Reviews

- The Times (UK, subscription required) reported this week that newly-released phone taps "have exposed how Marcello Dell'Utri, a senator and old friend of Berlusconi, received books from Marino Massimo De Caro. ... In one phone conversation with De Caro in 2012, Dell'Utri says one book he wants is so valuable, it will come with 'truffles on it'." Dell'Utri was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2014 for ties to the Sicilian mafia; he has maintained that he did not know the books he was receiving from De Caro were stolen. The texts of the phone taps were originally reported in La repubblica.

- The British Library has turned down an archive of material related to the Taliban, with librarians saying that housing the collection could violate anti-terrorism statutes, which prohibit the collection "of material which could be used by a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism" as well as the "circulation of terrorist publications."

- This year's National Book Festival commemorates the 200th anniversary of the sale of Jefferson's books to the nation to rebuild the destroyed Library of Congress. In the Washington Post, Mark Dimunation presents a few of Jefferson's favorite titles.

- As part of the processing of Toni Morrison's literary archive, staff at Princeton have been working to recover files from 5.25" floppy disks. Elena Colon-Marrero outlines the process used.

- From Damian Fleming, a list of free digitized manuscripts containing Old English.

- Kazuo Ishiguro's literary archive has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center for just over $1 million.

- At The Collation, Erin Blake shows how Hamnet is one big data set, and offers some advice on parsing exported MARC data.

- Rare Book School is now accepting applications for scholarships and the IMLS-RBS Fellowships.

- Michael Beckerman reports for the NYTimes about the discovery of missing parts of Adam Michna's 1653 musical work "The Czech Lute," found in a Franciscan library in Slany, near Prague.

- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of two James Joyce letters, which fetched more than $24,000 at RR Auction in Boston.

- At Early Modern Online Bibliography, Eleanor Shevlin discusses and reviews ArchBook, an open-access collection of essays "about specific design features in the history of the book."

- Jessamyn West has posted about her discussions with the White House personnel office about what the next Librarian of Congress should be able to bring to the table.

- Tim Cassedy writes in the LA Review of Books about the new app OMBY, "a game that you win by unscrambling Moby Dick, a few words at a time."

- The Library of Congress and Levenger Press are publishing Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark, examining "the critical role that maps played in Jefferson's vision of a formidable republic that would no longer be eclipsed by European empires."

- Items from the Kerry Stokes Collection, including the Rothschild Prayerbook, will be on display at the University of Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum until 15 November. A lecture series accompanies the exhibition.

- In Humanities, Steve Moyer reports on the use of spectral imaging and reflectance transformation imaging on the Jubliees palimpsest.

- Ancestry.com and Gannett Newspapers are collaborating to digitize the full archives of some 80 daily newspapers.

- Elizabeth Ott highlights an utterly fantastic new acquisition at UNC Chapel Hill: an 18th-century perspective "peep show" of a printer's shop at work.

- The British Library will loan the Codex Sinaiticus to the British Museum for an exhibition exploring religion in Egypt after the pharaohs.

- In the Deccan Herald, Pradeep Sebastian explores the fascination with biblio-theft, highlighting a few recent cases.

- Michelle Tay writes for Blouin Artinfo about Sotheby's auction of selections from Pierre Bergé's collection of rare books, which will begin with a sale in December.

- A long-sought Nazi "gold train" may have been located in southwestern Poland after a death-bed confession. The armored train is believed to have been carrying weapons, gold, art, and possibly Nazi archives. Authorities are urging treasure-hunters to stay away, as they fear that the hidden train may be booby-trapped.

- Satellite images reveal the extent of the destruction being wrought on the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS.

Reviews

- The Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale's Lost Manuscript; review by Dana Jennings in the NYTimes. The manuscript, left unfinished when Peale died in 1885, is being published by the American Museum of Natural History.

- Rosemarie Ostler's Founding Grammars; review by Barbara Spindel in the CSM.

- Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; review by Jennifer Maloney in the WSJ. This one sounds fascinating ...

Links & Reviews

- The NYPL's leadership announced this week that they have abandoned their much-panned renovation scheme known as the "Central Library Plan." More coverage from the WSJ and from Scott Sherman at The Nation. Scholar Caleb Crain, who pushed back against the ill-conceived plan from the get-go, weighed in. Much credit to him and to all of the others who worked so diligently to bring about this week's developments.

- MARIAB (Massachusetts and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers) is now SNEAB (Southern New England Antiquarian Booksellers), having added Connecticut booksellers to its remit.

- New from NINES and led by UVA's Andrew Stauffer is Book Traces, which seeks to identify marginalia and inserts in 19th- and early 20th-century volumes in open library stacks. Coverage of the project has appeared in The Atlantic, Hyperallergic, The New Atlantis, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

- Adam Kirsch's TNR piece "Technology is Taking Over English Departments: The False Promise of Digital Humanities" has spawned a number of valuable rebuttals, including Ted Underwood's "You can't govern reception," Glen Worthey's "Why are such terrible things written about DH? Kirsch v. Kirschenbaum," and Ryan Cordell's "On Ignoring Encoding." Worthey positions Kirsch's piece very aptly against Matt Kirschenbaum's "What is 'Digital Humanities,' and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things about It?," which is absolutely a must-read for anyone with any interest at all in these matters.

- The University of Illinois has launched Project Unica, an initiative to "preserve and share books that exist as sole survivors." The project has now been opened so that other university libraries can share digital copies of their own unique copies.

- At Atlas Obscura, a look at some of the remaining chained libraries.

- From Anne Trubek at Belt magazine, a look inside the famous bibliophilic Rowfant Club.

- The Getty Research Institute has acquired a late 16th-century liber amicorum compiled by Johann Joachim Prack von Asch, military attaché from the Holy Roman Empire to the Ottoman court.

- From The Guardian, a pretty interesting and amusing infographic, "How to tell you're reading a gothic novel."

- In the Chronicle, Marc Parry reports on libraries' use of "discovery tools."

- By this time, if you haven't heard about the 21 April announcement from booksellers George Koppelman and Daniel Wechsler that they've found what they believe to be a dictionary annotated by Shakespeare, you've been sleeping quite well indeed! Their site on the book is Shakespeare's Beehive. Garrett Scott rounded up very nearly all of the news reports and posts (skeptical and otherwise) on the topic, so I'm not going to repeat that process - but do go read through the links he's collected. I've spent a decent amount of time looking at the images of the volume (and have asked for an image of the front pastedown and flyleaf, to no avail thus far), and am unconvinced that the book was Shakespeare's, but it's certainly a notable volume and one very much deserving of thorough study.

- A 1482 printed Torah sold at Christie's Paris this week for $3.8 million.

- Over at Public Domain Review, Mike Jay writes on John Robison and his "exposé" of the Illuminati in "Darkness Over All."

- Also at PDR, Nicholas Humphrey writes on animal trials of the medieval period.

- From bookseller Lorne Blair, a great story of finding the right home for Andrew Jackson's family Bible.

- Peter Suber, director of Harvard's Office for Scholarly Communication, writes on takedown notices Harvard received from mega-publisher Elsevier.

- From the UK National Archives blog, Jo Pugh asks if something in an archive can ever be "discovered." A good discussion of the question, actually.

- From the Department of Utterly Ridiculous, the Ohio Historical Society will officially change its name to the Ohio History Connection after surveys reportedly showed that people found the words "historical" and "society" to be "too exclusive and antiquated." Sigh.

- In the same vein, Mireille Silcoff's piece in the New York Times Magazine on physical books "becoming sexy" as furniture/decoration.

- Kembrew McLeod writes at The Atlantic about the great hoaxer George Psalmanazar.

- The Milwaukee Public Library is considering the sale or long-term loan of the iconic painting "The Bookworm," by Carl Spitzweg. An offer of $400,000 has been received for the piece, donated to the library in 1972 by René Von Schleintz. Over at Book Trade Ephemera, more on the use(s) of this painting in various ephemeral forms.

- Via Bethany Nowviskie on Twitter, a Neatline representation of Sterne's Sentimental Journey.

- The University of Chicago libraries offered a $1,000 prize to anyone who could identify a shorthand script used to annotate a 1504 edition of Homer's Odyssey. Less than a week passed before the prize was claimed by Daniele Metilli, an Italian computer engineer.

- From Erin Blake at The Collation, an exploration of the displaying of variant titles in catalog records, with a call for comments from catalog users.

- In case you missed it: the BSA awarded its 2014 St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize for outstanding scholarship in the bibliography of American history and literature to Joseph J. Felcone for his Printing in New Jersey, 1754-1800: A Descriptive Bibliography (AAS, 2013).

- There's a new (and very useful) index to APHA's Printing History.

- Carolyn Kellogg reports on a new, hi-tech quest to discover the bones of Cervantes in the Convent of las Trinidades Descalzas in Madrid. A more in-depth story from Fiona Govan in the Telegraph.

- In The Guardian, Paul Laity writes on the history of Penguin's Pelican imprint.

- At The Junto, Sara Georgini rounds up some newly-released or forthcoming titles on early American history for your summer reading pleasure.

- Also at The Junto, Jonathan Wilson on colonial commencement ceremonies.

- In Slate's series on design, Michael Agresta writes on library design in "What Will Become of the Library?"

- Jonathan Green uses Eric White's census of incunable print runs to produce some distribution graphs.

- While I'm not sure the name was the best choice, I'm interested to see that the Navy is going to offer its sailors a Navy eReader Device (NeRD), filled with e-books (but with no means of adding more, as the whole thing comes preloaded).

Reviews

- Lynne Cheney's James Madison: A Life Reconsidered; review by Gordon S. Wood in the NYTimes.

- Fred Kaplan's John Quincy Adams: American Visionary; review by Robert W. Merry in the NYTimes.

- Margery Heffron's Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams; review by Virginia DeJohn Anderson in the NYTimes.

- Stephen H. Grant's Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Daniel Brown's The Poetry of Victorian Scientists; review by Angelique Richardson in the TLS.

- Russell Shorto's Amsterdam; review by Philipp Blom in the TLS.

- Jonathan Israel's Revolutionary Ideas; review by Ruth Scurr in the WSJ.

- John Drury's Music at Midnight; review by Barton Swaim in the WSJ.

- Bruce Holsinger's A Burnable Book; review by Stephanie Downes in the Sydney Morning Herald.

- Stuart Bennett's Lord Moira's Echo; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.

Jacques Gets 3.5 Years

William Jacques received a 3.5-year jail sentence today for the theft of books from the Royal Horticultural Society. He was found guilty on 22 June. The judge told Jacques "You are a Cambridge graduate and should know better, I suppose. This was a systematic and carefully planned theft and you had prepared what, in my view, was a target list, from your research at that library, of books that were worth stealing. ... The effect of your criminality was to undermine and destroy parts of the cultural heritage that's contained within these libraries and make it more difficult for those who have a legitimate interest in these books to gain access to them because libraries have to take inconvenient and expensive steps to stop thefts of this kind."

Good news indeed.

Jacques Guilty

The BBC is reporting that William Jacques has been found guilty of the theft of Ambroise Verschaffelt's Nouvelle Iconographie des Camellias (1849-1860), a set totaling 13 volumes and worth £40,000-50,000, from the library of the Royal Horticultural Society in London. Sentencing will be held on 20 July.

Jury Gets Jacques Case

The jury has begun deliberations in the William Jacques theft trial. They had not reached a verdict by end of business on Monday and will resume on Tuesday morning.

Jacques Had "Shopping List," Trial Reveals

British media outlets are reporting that prosecutors have presented some damning evidence during the opening hours of the trial of William Jacques: "When he was arrested police found a 'thief's shopping list' of more than 70 rare titles from the [Royal Horticultural Society's] library, complete with their shelf references, what condition they were in, and their values on the American market, the jury heard." The list was described as "neatly itemised on several pieces of A4 paper."

Prosecutor Gino Connor said of the list "What was of interest as far as the document was concerned is that the books were listed in sequential order as to where they would be found in the library, which tends to suggest that was a great deal of prior planning as far as this was concerned."

The Daily Mail reports that eight additional titles on the "shopping list" were missing from the library's shelves, although it's not clear whether they've also been stolen (by Jacques or anyone else).

Connor added of the thefts "This was ... a systematic, carefully planned theft, committed by a man who knew precisely what he was doing. He had been an undergraduate at Cambridge when he was younger, he had been a member of the British Library and the London Library in the past, and he had an interest in rare and valuable books. He wasn't a shoplifter in WHSmith."

Jacques Jury Picked, Trial Underway

A jury has been sworn in for the trial of William Simon Jacques, who stands accused of stealing Ambroise Verschaffelt's Nouvelle Iconographie des Camellias (1849-1860), a set totaling 13 volumes and worth £40,000-50,000, from the library of the Royal Horticultural Society in London.

The trial began this morning at 10:30 local time, at Southwark Crown Court.

Jacques Too Pleads Not Guilty

Some more court action in our other British book thievery case: William Simon Jacques was in court on Thursday and he, like Raymond Scott, also entered a not guilty plea. His trial is set for the week of 4 May.

Jacques to Stand Trial

Book thief William Simon Jacques appeared in court yesterday for a committal hearing; he did not apply for bail (presumably after his two-year bail-jump last time around that would have been instantly denied). Local media reports note that Jacques will next be in court on 25 February, when he will enter a plea in the case.

Jacques stands accused of stealing Ambroise Verschaffelt's Nouvelle Iconographie des Camellias (1849-1860), a set totaling 13 volumes and worth £40,000-50,000, from the library of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Book Thief Jacques Nabbed, Finally

It's been more than a year since we last had an update on William Simon Jacques, 40, who went missing last May after skipping bail on charges that he stole books from the Royal Horticultural Society.

The authorities finally caught up with Jacques on Christmas day, arresting him in Selby, Yorkshire. He appeared in City of Westminster magistrates court, where he was charged with the theft of Ambroise Verschaffelt's Nouvelle Iconographie des Camellias (1849-1860), a set totaling 13 volumes and worth £40,000-50,000, between December 2006 and February 2007. Jacques is believed to have signed into the library using a false name ("Mr. Santoro").

Jacques has also been charged, the BBC notes, with "going equipped to commit theft." His next court date is 21 January.

You can see images from the Verschaffelt camellia books here (please note these are not the volumes Jacques is accused of stealing; those have not been recovered). There's a picture of Jacques in this 2008 BBC report.

Police have asked antiquarian booksellers to keep an eye out for the camellia volumes - which are, I fear, probably already separated into individual plates (I sure hope I'm wrong about that). I'll keep a weather-eye on the case as it proceeds.

Guardian Comments on Book Thefts

The Guardian's crime correspondent, Sandra Laville, has a column today on library thefts, including updates on William Simon Jacques (aka still on the run) and Farhad Hakimzadeh, plus some new news about a case which had slipped under my radar, that of David Slade.

Slade, 59, is the former head of the ABA and a longtime antiquarian book dealer in England. He stole 68 books from the collections of financier Sir Evelyn de Rothschild (he'd been hired to catalogue the collection and swiped the items on the sly), and sold them at auction. He pled guilty after Rothschild discovered the books were missing during an inventory. Laville points out that this case - and it's a doozy - has received "no publicity" to date, which is true, and regrettable.

Laville: "Alan Shelley, current president [of the ABA], said the only way to eradicate the trafficking of rare books was to work closely with libraries, auctioneers and dealers.

The British Library has led the way by admitting when it is the victim of theft. But while major international libraries alert each other to details of stolen books or descriptions of thieves, these do not always reach the antiquarian book trade and not all libraries are honest about falling victim to theft.

'We all need to be a bit more grown up,' said Jolyon Hudson, from Pickering and Chatto antiquarian bookseller. '[Libraries] are the curators of the nation's knowledge, and when they lose it they are somewhat embarrassed to admit that.'"

All fair points, and all reasons that those of us who work hard to make these cases public do what we do. Auction houses and book dealers must do a more thorough job of checking provenance, and must report suspicious items when they are offered for sale. Libraries and all other institutions must speak out when they've been robbed, and must follow through on the cases and carry them to completion. Collectors must also be watchful of what they're purchasing - even when it's from reputable dealers - and follow up on any suspicious items offered or purchased. Most importantly, all three groups must talk to each other.

But the media also plays a role here: The Guardian reaches a whole lot more people than my posts do, so it cannot just be dealers, auctioneers, librarians and collectors who talk about these matters amongst themselves (although that is a terribly important component). Laville and her counterparts at other news organizations should take these thefts as seriously as we do, and write about them more often. If the international media publicized cultural crimes more often and in more depth, not only would more thieves be captured, but judges and legislatures would take notice and enact the penalties these criminals deserve.

There is no quick fix to the problem. As long as there are books and libraries, there will always be book thieves. Those of us charged with the protection of our cultural heritage must, indeed, raise our voices still louder to demand strong punishments for who seek to steal and damage. But we cannot do it alone.

Looking Back

As 2009 makes its arrival (in a bone-chilling way here in Boston: it's currently 6 degrees, with a wind chill making it feel like -13), The Guardian looks back at 2008 in books, an interesting compilation of last year's biblio-news.

Concerning other matters of interest (presumably) to you all, dear readers, here are some of the highlights and lowlights (mostly the latter, unfortunately) from 2008 in book crime. The hyperlinks on each person's name will take you to previous posts related to their crimes. Following the chronology is a list of thefts from this year which remain unsolved.

- The Transy Four failed in their bid to obtain reduced prison sentences when a three-judge panel on the Court of Appeals ruled that they should have received more prison time rather than less. (February) Unfortunately their trial judge ignored the appeals court and let her original sentences stand. (October)

- Eight books stolen from a Slovakian library in December 2007 were recovered in a Bupadest bookshop. (February)

- Jay Miller was sentenced to an eighteen-month prison term for the theft of rare books and antiques from the estate of retired Harvard professor William Ernest Hocking. (March) He was released from prison after only seven months. (November)

- Oliver Fallon, who stole materials from the Scottish Catholic Archive in Edinburgh, was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and ordered to pay a fine of £16,000. (May)

- Peter Joseph Bellwood was sentenced to one year in prison, to be followed by five years' expulsion from Denmark, and ordered to pay a 324,000 kroner ($67,000) fine for the theft of maps from the collections of the Danish Royal Library. (May) Bellwood is currently serving a 4.5-year prison term in Britain for thefts from the National Library of Wales.

- William Simon Jacques, suspected of stealing books from the Royal Horticultural Society in London, skipped bail and is believed to remain at large. (May)

- Raymond Scott, an eccentric British book dealer, was arrested after the recovery of Durham University's First Folio, which Scott took to the Folger Library for authentication. (July) Scott filed suit against the university claiming it's not their Folio (October), but was was later re-arrested in the First Folio case, and then again for stealing books from a Waterstone's shop (November)

- In the case of César Gómez Rivero, Spanish paper El Pais reported that two South American associates of Rivero had been identified, and that investigations continue. (August)

- Richard Delaney, who stole £89,000 worth of rare books and maps from Birmingham University, was sentenced to a one-year prison term (which the judge ordered suspended for eighteen months). (August)

- Eugene Zollman was indicted on charges that he stole Jefferson Davis materials from Transylvania University in 1994. The case was assigned to judge Jennifer Coffman, the same judge who ruled in the Transy Four case. Zollman's case is pending. (August)

- James Brubaker was sentenced to 30 months and prison and ordered to pay $200,000 in restitution to more than 100 libraries from which he stole more than 1000 items. (September)

- Edward Renehan, former head of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, was sentenced to an eighteen-month prison term, plus two years of supervised release and the forfeiture of $86,700 (which he'd received for the sale of letters he stole from the TRA's collections). (September)

- Several books stolen from a Vienna bookshop in October 2007 were recovered in Toronto, but the suspects in the case were not expected to face charges. Other books from the heist had been recovered earlier in Europe. (October)

- Joshua McCarty and two associates (Zachary Scranton and Angela Bays) were arrested in relation to the theft of two rare Ohio law books from the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center (September). McCarty and Scranton were later indicted (October). The case is still pending, so far as I can tell.

- Daniel Lorello, a former employee at the New York State Archives who stole items from the State Library, was sentenced to 2-6 years in prison (which I still think is an awfully wide range), ordered to pay $129,500 in restitution, to be divided among people who unknowingly bought stolen property, and agreed to forfeit his personal collection of historic artifacts and documents, valued at approximately $80,000, to the New York State Library and Archives. (October)

- Denning McTague, who stole Civil War documents from the National Archives in Philadelphia while working there as an intern, was released from prison after serving twelve months of a fifteen-month term. (October)

- Book collector Farhad Hakimzadeh was arrested on charges that he defaced more than 150 books at several British libraries in order to "improve his personal collection" with the illustrations and maps. (November) He'll be sentenced this month.

- Laessio Rodrigues de Oliveira was sentenced to five years in prison for the theft of several rare books from the Institute for Research Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro. (December)

- Lester Weber, former curator of the Mariners' Museum, was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to theft, mail fraud and filing false tax returns. Weber stole more than 3,500 documents from the museum and sold them on eBay (most have not been recovered). Weber's wife, Lori Childs, was sentenced to a fifteen-month prison term for filing a false tax return. (December)

The following thefts from 2008 remain unsolved (as far as I know):

- A large collection of maps and atlases, stolen from a London collector's office in December.

- A number of rare books stolen from a display case at Boston's Old South Church in September.

- A Mark Twain letter, reported missing after the Denver Book Fair in August.

- Four manuscript diaries from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, stolen at Boston's South Station in March.

Updates or additions always appreciated.

Suspected Book Thief On the Lam

The BBC reports that William Simon Jacques, 39, suspected of stealing books from the Royal Horticultural Society's building in Vincent Square, London, has gone missing after being released on bail.

"The items taken include 13 volumes of a rare collection on the camellia flower, valued at about £50,000, plus several other highly-prized 19th century books."

Jacques was arrested on 2 April after an investigation revealed he had been signing into the library with a false library card giving his name as "Mr. Santoro."

Photograph here.