Anonymous Patron writes “OregonLive.com Reports Charles Wayne Gray, 60, of Lake Oswego, was arrested Tuesday on accusations he stole more than 1,000 library books, CDs and videotapes from libraries in Clackamas and Washington counties and sold them on the Internet.
Gray, a part-time worker at the Clackamas County library information network and the Tigard Public Library, sold at least $10,000 worth of library materials online in the past six months, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.”
System
Gray would also scan the Internet to find out what items were in demand and then go to the library to check them out.
As librarians we need to see if we can create ways to watch for books stolen from libraries and then sold on eBay or Amazon. Maybe a guide for how to identify a stolen library book. If such a guide was available Amazon and eBay might put a link to it from their book listings.
I hope the local prosecutor goes for felony charges.
Re:System
Most of the books that I sell online were acquired at Friends of The Library book sales, where volumes that have been deleted
(weeded, deselected, choose your preferred term) from their associated library’s collection come cheap. I am deliberate in describing the ex-library status and the fact of stamps and stickers on the books in my Amazon.com inventory. I’ve found that most systems mark the books they weed with stamps that label them as “deleted”, “discarded”, “From the Friends of xxx Library”, or something similar to identify that they are no longer library property. For older books, this stamp goes on the paper circ sticker, but for newer books, the stamp is often on the mylar jacket or the plastic inventory barcode, where it easily smears or rubs off during handling. In fact, I usually wipe any remnants off to keep them from smudging onto other books.
I’ve already had some concerned emails from institutional purchasers who were worried about the book’s provenance. In one case, it was a student who was trying to replace a university library book that had been stolen out of his car. The librarians were worried that one theft might have begat another. In a more recent case, I sold an 8 lb deleted esoteric reference work to a government library, and they were a bit concerned that it still had the previous lib’s stamps and stickers. I know the tech services manager of the original lib, and he’s willing to write me a reference verifying the legitimacy of the book’s deletion. I haven’t yet heard back if this will be sufficient for them, or if I’ll have to take a return and refund them the purchase price. Of course it is almost a decade since its printing and is generally unavailable at other online sources, so they seem unlikely to find another, less questionable-looking, copy.
One of the other branches that I (used to) buy from has recently changed their handling methods for weeds. They cut the bar code out of the fly-leaf or dust jacket. This makes it easier for the de-cataloger to handle and frees the books for efficient dispatch to the Friends storage. It has also reduced the income for the Friends’ sales and increased the number of books that have to be junked at the end of the sale weekend. The book scouts are staying away, and the avid readers aren’t buying as many because of how damaged they are.
I guess this was something of a long-winded way of saying that I don’t know how useful a guide for how to identify stolen library books would be. Sure, the discard stamp helps, but most of the ones I see are barely discernable as legitimate deletions. The guide could easily become a manual on how to make a stolen book appear to be properly weeded.