Yesterday I noted the Zollman indictment; Travis has some excellent followup on that today, reporting: "The case has been assigned to Judge Jennifer Coffman, a former librarian and the judge in the Transy Four case. The case is being prosecuted by David Marye, the prosecutor in the Transy Four case."
This is super news, since we know from that prior case that both Marye and Coffman are extremely serious about prosecuting bibliocrimes. Travis advises Zollman "plead guilty as soon as possible." I suppose if I were advising Zollman, I'd say that too. But I'm not, so I'd like to see this case go to trial and Zollman get the maximum possible penalty.
Showing posts with label Zollman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zollman. Show all posts
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Links & Reviews
- An indictment this week in the Zollman case: on Thursday, a federal grand jury in Lexington, KY indicted Eugene Zollman on two counts of stealing objects of cultural heritage. Zollman, a Jefferson Davis collector, is accused of snatching more than $15,000 worth of Davis materials from Transylvania University in 1994. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in jail. Zollman's lawyer said arraignment is scheduled for 13 August.
- Orwell is blogging. Ian has more, with links.
- The Boston Globe offers a "Reader's Guide to Literary Boston" today, which isn't really that at all, just a map with snippet-quotations from literature plunked down at various points. How one can make a map like this and not include a quote from The Late George Apley is completely beyond me.
- Also in the Globe, an editorial on the selection process for the new president of the BPL, which has resembled the veep searches in its secrecy. On Thursday, we're told, the finalists (who they are and how many there will be remains unannounced) will meet with the library's trustees, who apparently are expected to make a decision that day or the next, though, the editorial says, "deliberations could be extended. It's an option they should consider, because overnight is not enough time for a thoughtful review, and could fuel suspicion that the choice for president already had been made." A fair point, that. The first public interview meeting, says the BPL's website, will begin at 8 a.m. on Thursday 14 August in the McKim Building Orientation room.
- Paul Collins has two goodies for us this week: in Slate, he writes on strange travel guides (and blogs on that here), and he also notes a new book about giant vegetables.
- Ian finds a very cool criminal broadside.
- NPR's Melissa Block has a wonderful character study of E.B. White's Charlotte A. Cavatica.
- Joyce discovered (and raves about) EverNote, a browser-based or downloadable web-clipping program. I've started using the web version; it's handy.
- Travis comments on the Delaney 'sentence,' and coins a new motto for English justice: "England: where truth is not an absolute defence, but heroin addiction is." Heh. Travis also predicts Brubaker's sentence (still set for 15 September, as far as I know), saying it's likely to be anything from 15-21 months in jail.
- The Beijing opening ceremonies on Friday night were truly a sight for printophilic eyes: not only did a large LED scroll play a key role in the festivities, but one segment of the show included a marvelously complex display of Chinese movable type. Like Ian, I assumed throughout that some sort of pneumatics were being used to create the effect; when people jumped out at the end, everyone in the room gasped. It was incredibly impressive. Ian notes an interview with director Zhang Yimou where he said that the performers in that display had been practicing eight hours a day for four months (longer days recently), and that they'd never pulled it off perfectly until the ceremony itself. Wow. Laura noticed this too, and has some more excellent links for this week.
- A fun hodge-podge from BibliOdyssey.
- Ian Rankin has an essay in The Scotsman on the importance and relevance of James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This is one of those classics that I've really been meaning to read; I'll have to start moving it up the list.
- The Bookseller has launched a public vote for the "Oddest of Odd" titles, offering a choice between thirty years' worth of strange book titles. The winner will be announced on 5 September. I have to say I'm pretty taken with the first award-winner, 1978's Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.
- LISNews points out "100 Places to Connect to Other Bibliophiles Online". My list would have been different, but this isn't a bad selection.
- AHA Today highlights MHS' Thomas Jefferson Electronic Archive.
Reviews
- Renee Weingarten's Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant is reviewed by Frances Wilson in The Telegraph.
- Ingrid Rowland's new biography Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic is reviewed by Marc Kaufman in the Washington Post.
- Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson is reviewed by Dominic Sandbrook in The Telegraph.
- Ophelia Field's The Kit-Kat Club is reviewed by Allan Massie in The Scotsman. This book has gotten really impressive coverage in the British press.
- Orwell is blogging. Ian has more, with links.
- The Boston Globe offers a "Reader's Guide to Literary Boston" today, which isn't really that at all, just a map with snippet-quotations from literature plunked down at various points. How one can make a map like this and not include a quote from The Late George Apley is completely beyond me.
- Also in the Globe, an editorial on the selection process for the new president of the BPL, which has resembled the veep searches in its secrecy. On Thursday, we're told, the finalists (who they are and how many there will be remains unannounced) will meet with the library's trustees, who apparently are expected to make a decision that day or the next, though, the editorial says, "deliberations could be extended. It's an option they should consider, because overnight is not enough time for a thoughtful review, and could fuel suspicion that the choice for president already had been made." A fair point, that. The first public interview meeting, says the BPL's website, will begin at 8 a.m. on Thursday 14 August in the McKim Building Orientation room.
- Paul Collins has two goodies for us this week: in Slate, he writes on strange travel guides (and blogs on that here), and he also notes a new book about giant vegetables.
- Ian finds a very cool criminal broadside.
- NPR's Melissa Block has a wonderful character study of E.B. White's Charlotte A. Cavatica.
- Joyce discovered (and raves about) EverNote, a browser-based or downloadable web-clipping program. I've started using the web version; it's handy.
- Travis comments on the Delaney 'sentence,' and coins a new motto for English justice: "England: where truth is not an absolute defence, but heroin addiction is." Heh. Travis also predicts Brubaker's sentence (still set for 15 September, as far as I know), saying it's likely to be anything from 15-21 months in jail.
- The Beijing opening ceremonies on Friday night were truly a sight for printophilic eyes: not only did a large LED scroll play a key role in the festivities, but one segment of the show included a marvelously complex display of Chinese movable type. Like Ian, I assumed throughout that some sort of pneumatics were being used to create the effect; when people jumped out at the end, everyone in the room gasped. It was incredibly impressive. Ian notes an interview with director Zhang Yimou where he said that the performers in that display had been practicing eight hours a day for four months (longer days recently), and that they'd never pulled it off perfectly until the ceremony itself. Wow. Laura noticed this too, and has some more excellent links for this week.
- A fun hodge-podge from BibliOdyssey.
- Ian Rankin has an essay in The Scotsman on the importance and relevance of James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This is one of those classics that I've really been meaning to read; I'll have to start moving it up the list.
- The Bookseller has launched a public vote for the "Oddest of Odd" titles, offering a choice between thirty years' worth of strange book titles. The winner will be announced on 5 September. I have to say I'm pretty taken with the first award-winner, 1978's Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.
- LISNews points out "100 Places to Connect to Other Bibliophiles Online". My list would have been different, but this isn't a bad selection.
- AHA Today highlights MHS' Thomas Jefferson Electronic Archive.
Reviews
- Renee Weingarten's Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant is reviewed by Frances Wilson in The Telegraph.
- Ingrid Rowland's new biography Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic is reviewed by Marc Kaufman in the Washington Post.
- Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson is reviewed by Dominic Sandbrook in The Telegraph.
- Ophelia Field's The Kit-Kat Club is reviewed by Allan Massie in The Scotsman. This book has gotten really impressive coverage in the British press.
Monday, June 23, 2008
A Theft Case Even More Bizarre Than Usual
I've waited to post about the Eugene Zollman theft case for a while simply because when I first heard about it, it didn't make any sense to me. Still doesn't, but I've sat on it long enough. On 19 May of this year, 70-year old Eugene Zollman of La Porte, IN, was charged in federal court with theft of major artwork for stealing more than $15,000 worth of Jefferson Davis documents from the Transylvania University library ... in 1994.
Zollman, a Davis impersonator and collector, had visited the Transy library in April and May of 1994, according to visitor logs (more about which later). In November 2007, Rice University's Lynda Crist, editor of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, noticed certain Davis documents which she knew were supposed to be in the Transylvania library for sale on the website of Stanford, CT-based Alexander Autographs.
I'll let Travis take it from there: "A series of phone calls between the cops and feds and dealers led to an investigation that has led to this moderately happy ending. He’s been indicted in Kentucky and Indiana and hopefully the 70 year old will spend some time in prison. The investigation also revealed that these are not the first documents Zollman stole from Transylvania and auctioned off" [according to news reports, "police determined that Zollman had also auctioned Jefferson Davis documents that belonged to Transylvania through a New Orleans auction house in 1997, the affidavit says. But those documents have not been found.]
And there's a twist. Alexander Autographs president Basil Panagopulos told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Transy wanted to keep word of the thefts under wraps, and only went to the police when he "insisted that he needed a report from law enforcement that described the items as stolen in order to take further action." Transy officials deny this, saying they immediately contacted police when they were made aware of the documents' reemergence.
Panagopulos said in a later statement/press release that, at first, "The university's position was that they hoped that the documents could be simply returned, with no city police involvement nor any mention of 'Jefferson Davis' due to the controversial nature of Davis' stand during the Civil War [quite an odd reason, if you ask me]. Panagopulos pressed the issue, insisting that it was the duty of the institution to report the crime and prosecute any thief in order to not only reclaim any additional material he might have, but, in a broader sense, to protect all other vulnerable repositories of historic archives." He maintains that the university's failure to provide adequate specific information regarding the thefts meant that he legally still had to offer them for sale, which he did with the understanding that he would be the highest bidder in order to be able to return the stolen items to Transylvania. He said that he hoped to be able to return the items to the university by 3 June.
Everett Wilkie commented in an Ex-Libris post when this news broke, and his views are well worth sharing here: "From a security point of view, I would like to comment that Transy was able to produce researcher circulation records going back 26 years, which obviously proved crucial. RBMS/ALA guidelines recommend keeping such records permanently, for obvious reasons. At one point in a Guidelines revision several years ago, the RBMS Security Committee at a hearing was pressured by ACRL to drop that recommendation. I merely point out the apparent folly of discarding such records--ever." Indeed.
I haven't seen any updates on this case for a while, but it certainly is a strange one.
Zollman, a Davis impersonator and collector, had visited the Transy library in April and May of 1994, according to visitor logs (more about which later). In November 2007, Rice University's Lynda Crist, editor of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, noticed certain Davis documents which she knew were supposed to be in the Transylvania library for sale on the website of Stanford, CT-based Alexander Autographs.
I'll let Travis take it from there: "A series of phone calls between the cops and feds and dealers led to an investigation that has led to this moderately happy ending. He’s been indicted in Kentucky and Indiana and hopefully the 70 year old will spend some time in prison. The investigation also revealed that these are not the first documents Zollman stole from Transylvania and auctioned off" [according to news reports, "police determined that Zollman had also auctioned Jefferson Davis documents that belonged to Transylvania through a New Orleans auction house in 1997, the affidavit says. But those documents have not been found.]
And there's a twist. Alexander Autographs president Basil Panagopulos told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Transy wanted to keep word of the thefts under wraps, and only went to the police when he "insisted that he needed a report from law enforcement that described the items as stolen in order to take further action." Transy officials deny this, saying they immediately contacted police when they were made aware of the documents' reemergence.
Panagopulos said in a later statement/press release that, at first, "The university's position was that they hoped that the documents could be simply returned, with no city police involvement nor any mention of 'Jefferson Davis' due to the controversial nature of Davis' stand during the Civil War [quite an odd reason, if you ask me]. Panagopulos pressed the issue, insisting that it was the duty of the institution to report the crime and prosecute any thief in order to not only reclaim any additional material he might have, but, in a broader sense, to protect all other vulnerable repositories of historic archives." He maintains that the university's failure to provide adequate specific information regarding the thefts meant that he legally still had to offer them for sale, which he did with the understanding that he would be the highest bidder in order to be able to return the stolen items to Transylvania. He said that he hoped to be able to return the items to the university by 3 June.
Everett Wilkie commented in an Ex-Libris post when this news broke, and his views are well worth sharing here: "From a security point of view, I would like to comment that Transy was able to produce researcher circulation records going back 26 years, which obviously proved crucial. RBMS/ALA guidelines recommend keeping such records permanently, for obvious reasons. At one point in a Guidelines revision several years ago, the RBMS Security Committee at a hearing was pressured by ACRL to drop that recommendation. I merely point out the apparent folly of discarding such records--ever." Indeed.
I haven't seen any updates on this case for a while, but it certainly is a strange one.
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