Tuesday, August 01, 2006

BPL Believes Smiley Stole More Maps

The Boston Public Library has now joined the British Library, Harvard and Yale in maintaining that E. Forbes Smiley stole more maps than he's acknowledged, reports the Boston Globe. BPL president Bernard Margolis said "I think all of the affected institutions believe [Forbes Smiley] took other maps." He declined to say how many additional maps are missing at the BPL or whether the library has any evidence linking Smiley to the thefts.

Smiley admitted to stealing thirty-four maps from the BPL; all but three of those were recovered by the FBI, and Margolis told the Globe that another "will be returned to the library by a private collector who heard about the thefts and realized it was stolen."

[Update: Harvard's list of thirteen missing maps is now available here - if you have any information on them, please contact lhcl@fas.harvard.edu.]