[MSN] Throw book at thief, says library

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Throw book at thief, says library 

· US courts urged to impose tougher jail term
· Rare map dealer's offences 'transcend monetary loss' 

Mark Honigsbaum
Friday September 15, 2006
The Guardian 


It helped shaped Europe's view of America and survived the burning at the
stake of its first owner, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as
well as the English civil war and the Blitz.
But the world map, drawn by the 16th century German cartographer Peter Apian
and one of the first to show America as a separate continent, could not
survive the visit of Edward Forbes Smiley III to the British Library in June
2004.

Smiley, a 50-year-old US dealer in rare maps and known for his impeccable
blazers and scholarly demeanour, pleaded guilty in a US federal court this
year to stealing 97 rare maps, worth £1.6m, including the Apian, from the
British Library and leading US institutions. He had been armed only with a
razor blade. Now the British Library is demanding that US authorities throw
the book at Smiley, saying he stole three other maps, worth in total
£47,000, from the library and that by razoring the rare 1520 Apian map from
a volume owned by Cranmer - a key Turdor figure - he was guilty of "ripping
at the heart" of a public institution.
Ahead of Smiley's sentencing on September 27, Robert Goldman, a lawyer
retained by the British Library, has called for the dealer to be imprisoned
for up to eight years - two to three more years than called for by US
sentencing guidelines.

"The maps stolen by Smiley created the dreams of the explorer, merchant, and
powerful," Mr Goldman wrote. "They brought inspiration of a new land to the
oppressed and the persecuted. They charted the paths of national expansion
and empire building ... the harm caused by Smiley transcends monetary loss."
His demand is prompted by the library's suspicion that Smiley may be
withholding information.

Smiley, from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, consulted about 33 albums at
the British Library between June 2004 and March 2005, but cut maps from only
four volumes. Only the Apian map has been found. A rare first edition of Sir
William Alexander's 1624 map of New England and Canada, and a 1578 map from
George Best's A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Martin Frobisher, have
turned up in the collections of a London dealer and US collector, who bought
the maps from Smiley.

In his plea bargain Smiley admits taking the Apian. As identifying marks are
missing from the other maps the library has not proved their provenance.
Clive Field, the library's director of collections, says Smiley's
cooperation "has not been as full as one would wish", and that he is "a
serial thief on an industrial scale".

Yale, Harvard, and two other US libraries are also looking into whether they
have suffered from a Smiley visit. Richard Reeve, Smiley's lawyer, said the
FBI had proved only that his client had stolen 18 maps, and that Smiley gave
them details of another 86: "The libraries are getting back 86 maps that
they never would have been able to prove Smiley had taken."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/