[CPProt.net] Rare Documents Going Digital. Yale May Join Libraries Using Technology Against Theft Of Originals

[Ton Cremers]

Rare Documents Going Digital

Yale May Join Libraries Using Technology Against Theft Of Originals

By KIM MARTINEAU
Courant Staff Writer

January 15 2006

NEW HAVEN -- Yale University has placed its massive collection of modern and antique 
maps off limits to the public as it sifts through its material and tries to identify valuable maps 
that may be missing.

The shutdown comes as the FBI investigates noted map dealer E. Forbes Smiley III, who 
was arrested and charged last summer with slicing several maps from rare books in the 
reading room of Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

"We are doing what any good custodian of rare material should do when there's a worry 
about theft," said university librarian Alice Prochaska.

Smiley's arrest has put some of the nation's top institutions on edge, forcing them to walk an 
ever finer line between protecting their priceless treasures and making them available to 
geographers, scholars and the public. In the weeks after Smiley's arrest, the Boston Public 
Library, the Newberry Library in Chicago and the British Library in London discovered that 
rare books handled by the Martha's Vineyard map dealer were also missing maps. Other 
spots Smiley frequented - Harvard University, the New York Historical Society and the New 
York Public Library - are still reviewing their collections.

Once the inventory has been done, Yale may follow the lead of the Library of Congress, the 
British Library, Harvard and others, in digitizing its rarest material. Anyone with a computer 
can now view the Library of Congress' $10 million crown jewel, Martin Waldseemuller's 1507 
world map, the first to use the word "America," or turn the pages of an atlas of Europe, at the 
British Library, drawn in the 1570s by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator.

Libraries are digitizing their maps, first, to make their collections more accessible. But there 
are security benefits, too. By making high-resolution images available, libraries can limit the 
number of people handling their material, reducing the chance of theft. Second, if a map is 
stolen, libraries can circulate a picture of it among dealers, to alert them. And finally, if the 
stolen map later turns up, libraries can compare the stains, creases and imperfections of 
their original against the scanned image of the stolen maps to help prove ownership.

"It's undoubtedly the wave of the future," said George Ritzlin, a rare map dealer in Evanston, 
Ill. "No two copies are exactly the same. It should be a warning to thieves."

Since his arrest, Smiley has made brief appearances in Superior Court in New Haven, where 
he faces three counts of larceny. He has simultaneously been in close contact with federal 
authorities since at least early fall, as part of the FBI's investigation of map thefts across the 
Northeast and beyond, according to library sources and those in the map trade.

At least two New York rare map dealers and a London dealer have been asked by the FBI to 
retrieve several dozen maps they had purchased from Smiley, according to map trade 
sources. At great expense, the dealers have had to buy back some of those maps from 
customers and other dealers, in a trade where reputation is everything.

"The right thing to do is cooperate," said Philip Burden, a London dealer. Burden said the FBI 
has asked for several maps he bought from Smiley, a formerly trusted colleague who helped 
him research parts of his 1996 reference book, "The Mapping of North America."

The fallout has quietly circled back to Yale. In November, Fred Musto, the curator who 
oversaw the map collection for about a decade, was cited for gross mismanagement and 
fired, according to sources. At about the same time, Yale closed its collection and began 
painstakingly picking through its maps, sheet by sheet.

Those who dealt with Musto have been sympathetic. "I always found Fred very pleasant, 
responsive, helpful, sociable - he was a nice guy," said Michael Buehler, a dealer in 
Southampton, Mass.

Until the map department shut its doors, anyone with a Yale ID or a "privileges pass" could 
ride to the top floor of Sterling Memorial Library, and handle any one of its approximately 
220,000 maps. The collection spreads across several rooms, stacked in drawers and 
cabinets, according to those who have been there. The rarest maps, most dating to before 
the Civil War - about 15,000 in all - are kept in two locked rooms protected by combination 
locks.

The inventory is probably long overdue. The reading rooms were full of nooks beyond view of 
the curator and his assistant and folders filled with maps would sometimes be given to 
patrons without the material being counted before and after use, according to dealers and a 
professor who has used the collection. In a recent posting on an online map discussion 
group, a former map curator at Yale, Barbara McCorkle, said she would have welcomed an 
inventory had she been given the resources.

On June 8, Yale was given a jolt. That's when a Beinecke librarian found an X-Acto blade on 
the floor where Smiley was looking at books. The librarian called Sterling and learned Smiley 
had been a suspect in a map theft there that had never been reported for "lack of proof," 
according to court records.

Those in the map trade have grumbled privately about the library's failure to warn them about 
Smiley or to be on the lookout for missing maps. More astonishing, they say, is that Yale 
failed to circulate the alert internally.

Smiley's lawyer in New Haven, Richard Reeve, would not comment on Yale's security but 
said some libraries are more vigilant than others. "The level of security and care with which 
maps are treated varies widely from institution to institution," he said.

The Sterling map room, with its view over Yale's quadrangle and the Gothic stone buildings 
that form its perimeter, is expected to remain closed through mid-February. The university, 
meanwhile, has improved oversight in all 22 libraries, Prochaska said. The last security 
overhaul, in 2001, followed another infamous breach when a former summer employee was 
caught hawking famous signatures on eBay sliced from rare books at Yale.

Yale is consulting with a San Francisco map collector, David Rumsey, who has scanned 
more than 12,000 maps in his private collection and posted them on his site: 
www.davidrumsey.com. Rumsey, a fine arts graduate of Yale, has advised many of the 
world's premier map libraries, including the one at the Library of Congress, which has about 
8,500 maps on its "American Memory" site. An exhaustive listing of map image sites, with 
ratings of their image quality, can be found on former British Library map librarian Tony 
Campbell's website: www.maphistory.info.

The revolution in technology is giving geographers, historians and other scholars 
unprecedented access to maps around the world, leading to new discoveries.

"People are discovering, every day, differences in maps people weren't aware of before," 
said William Reese, a Yale graduate and prominent rare book dealer in New Haven. "It's 
going to be a tremendous aid for scholarship."

Like the Library of Congress, the British Library has digitized only a minute portion of its 4.5 
million maps. "We want to share our goodies with everyone. It's just a matter of manpower, 
money and time," said map curator Peter Barber.

The four maps Smiley handled last spring - now missing - had not been scanned.

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