BACKGROUND: Thieves will not accept just anything
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By Hannu Marttila
Once a thief stole three first-edition copies of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens from a display case of a museum in London. A lawyer was jailed for stealing six letters of William Faulkner.
Major thieves are a case unto themselves. In Sweden, a 48-year-old employee of the Royal Library was caught last autumn after systematically stealing rare works over a decade. After interrogation the man blew himself up at home.
A map merchant and collector with a good reputation stole EUR 750,000 worth of maps from the library of Yale University. The man, who was caught in the summer, is believed to have operated around the world - as was the case with Melvin Perry, who stole maps in Helsinki.
However, in Scotland, Perry worked in a completely different field - stealing valuable pieces of golf literature.
Defining a valuable piece is not always easy for a library and a collector, notes Kai Ekholm, head librarian of the Finnish National Library.
A comic book store in New York had acquired a rare first edition album of Spiderman from 1963. An armed robber handcuffed the salesman and took the magazine, worth an estimated EUR 17,000.
In Britain, thieves have tried to get hold of manuscripts and galleys of unpublished Harry Potter books. The motive was money: some are willing to pay to get a chance to read the book a couple of days before everyone else.
Libraries in Finland have complained that early bound collections of the Disney comic Aku Ankka (Donald Duck) have been lost to thieves.
Libraries have different ways of protecting their most valuable works.
A study conducted a few years ago criticised as wasteful the video surveillance system that was used at the time at Helsinki's main library. No thefts of books actually took place, and book thieves had learned to remove the induction coils from the books that triggered theft alarms. A decade ago, the favourite among library thieves was the book Johdatus Suomen oikeusjärjestelmään ("An Introduction to the Finnish System of Justice").
In spite of the surveillance, thieves in Helsinki soon made off with - oops! - the library's video surveillance equipment.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.11.2005
More on this subject:
 Exhibitions put archive treasures at risk
FACTFILE: Kalevala and Pro Finlandia appeal key treasure in Literature Archive
Helsingin Sanomat
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