[MSN] E. Forbes Smiley III. Yale Posts List Of Missing Maps. Getting Word Out May Thwart Efforts To Sell/

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Yale Posts List Of Missing Maps
 Getting Word Out May Thwart Efforts To Sell
July 20, 2006 
By KIM MARTINEAU, Courant Staff Writer  NEW HAVEN -- An early map of Boston
that strategically highlighted the military positions of the Americans
during the Revolutionary War is one of the great rarities that Yale
University has discovered missing from its map collection in a long-awaited
inventory released this week.

"A Plan of Boston in New England with its Environs," drawn by British
loyalist Henry Pelham during the 1775-76 siege of Boston, appears on a list
of lost maps that Yale has posted on the Internet to alert map dealers and
collectors who might stumble across them. The Pelham map of Boston is worth
$100,000 or more.
 
 
"If we're extremely fortunate, maybe these items will turn up," said Alice
Prochaska, Yale's head librarian. "Keeping the community informed is good
for all of us."

Yale began to take stock of its map collection last summer after E. Forbes
Smiley III, a map dealer from Martha's Vineyard, was caught on a security
camera tearing a colorful world map from an atlas in Yale's rare books
library. The inventory was finished in February, but Yale withheld the
results, waiting for the FBI to finish investigating.

Last month, Smiley confessed to taking nearly a hundred maps from Yale and
other institutions, clearing the way for Yale to release its list of lost
maps. Versions of seven maps on the list also appear on Smiley's Web page as
"for sale" or "sold," including the Pelham map of Boston.

Libraries have historically kept incidents of theft hushed, afraid of
copy-cat crimes and of scaring off wealthy patrons wishing to donate
material. But for more than a decade now, experts in library security have
advocated publicizing thefts quickly and widely. Ken Sanders, a bookseller
in Salt Lake City, calls it "poisoning the well." The more people who know
that an item has been stolen, the harder it is to unload.

"Get the word out to as many people as possible if the goal is to recover
the material and apprehend the thief," said Sanders, former head of the
security committee for the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of
America's. "You've got to swallow your pride and get over the
embarrassment."

Last fall, Yale fired its longtime map curator and started digging through
its collection on the top floor of Sterling Memorial Library. Over several
months, librarians cross-checked card catalog records against stacks of
maps. By the project's end, between 90 and 95 maps were confirmed missing.
Some include the colonial American maps that Smiley specialized in. But a
smattering of early maps of Japan and Russia also turned up lost, along with
American maps worth only a few hundred dollars.

Yale posted the most valuable maps on its library Web page Wednesday and
sent a copy to the booksellers' association for its "stolen books" database.
Yale said that it does not suspect Smiley of taking any of them. "The FBI
did a very meticulous and painstaking job establishing what was taken and
I'm not questioning that," said Prochaska.

Maps, like books, are published in multiple copies. Yale was able to prove
that it owned the first issue of John Seller's 1676 map of New England by
comparing a photo of the map, and its distinct coloring, against a picture
of the map displayed on Smiley's Web page. In his description of the $75,000
map, Smiley brazenly mentioned the Yale copy but mischaracterized it as an
"uncolored copy."

Yale is missing versions of other maps that Smiley has posted on his
website, but the FBI apparently found no proof that they belong to Yale. One
map, an early engraving of Pennsylvania drawn by surveyor Thomas Holme, is
splashed across Smiley's homepage with an asking price of $60,000.

Smiley's lawyer, Richard Reeve, said that his client aided the FBI to the
fullest extent possible and chalked up the missing Sterling maps that appear
on his client's website as coincidence. "It's really unfortunate that Yale
has lost or misplaced or had stolen so many maps," he said. "I don't believe
any of those maps are connected to Forbes Smiley."

By making its list public, Yale has set a precedent among the libraries that
inventoried their collections after Smiley's arrest. If other libraries
follow, it could bring about a sea change in how maps are bought and sold,
as dealers and collectors start to insist on proof of clear title.

New York map dealer Harry Newman bought an early map of Boston from Smiley
without knowing that the Sterling Memorial Library's copy was lost. Although
Newman advertised the map nationally in a catalog shipped to Yale, no one
connected the dots.

"This is what we need," he said. "If you realize something is missing, don't
keep it quiet, let us know."

William Reese, a New Haven bookseller who advised Yale during the Smiley
investigation, said that institutions have a moral obligation to publicize
theft. "The more institutions make people aware of these problems, the
further we come to solving them," he said. "The vast majority of people are
selling maps conscientiously, but we have to understand that potential
thieves like Forbes Smiley are at work. Anyone shopping in these markets has
to be conscious of provenance."

Among map dealers, Smiley took the unusual step of displaying the maps he
had already sold, as bragging rights, a cheap form of advertising or both.
On his Web page, he claims to have sold Pelham's 1776 map of Boston for
$110,000. Yale says the Pelham map that it is missing was published a year
later, although it is possible that the date is wrong because many of Yale's
catalog records were written before the wave of map scholarship over the
past 30 years.

The other maps that Smiley handled that appear on Yale's list include a 1676
British map of the American colonies, sold for $70,000; a 1775 Bernard
Romans map of Boston, sold for $65,000; a 1773 British map of South
Carolina, sold for $55,000; and a 1793 map of Washington, D.C., sold for
$32,000. Two maps listed "for sale" also show up on Yale's list - the Holme
map of Pennsylvania and a later map of the state drawn by Reading Howell.

Smiley has admitted to stealing 97 rare maps worth more than $3 million from
various institutions. He faces up to six years in federal prison when
sentenced this fall.

Contact Kim Martineau at kmartineau at courant.com. 
 
http://www.courant.com/