• Text worth £20,000 among missing volumes
• Some have not been seen for more than 50 years

Anil Dawar and Maev Kennedy
The Guardian, Tuesday 17 March 2009

More than 9,000 books are missing from the British Library, including Renaissance treatises on theology and alchemy, a medieval text on astronomy, first editions of 19th- and 20th-century novels, and a luxury edition of Mein Kampf produced in 1939 to celebrate Hitler's 50th birthday.

The library believes almost all have not been stolen but rather mislaid among its 650km of shelves and 150m items – although some have not been seen in well over half a century...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/17...
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Okay, you guys. I know you like books, but when they are library books, you don't get to keep them forever. Hand 'em over...

No. Not gonna.

::Runs in the corner with my alchemy treatise and growls::

Mislay? Like they put them down in the wrong spot? Is that what they call losing things across the ocean?

:)

I hope they're still there. I have a horror of permanently lost books.

Now, I can understand when books get in the wrong spot in a public library. The PUBLIC (bless their hearts) has access to the stacks. They put things back incorrectly. Or they put them in their backpacks and walk out without checking them out. These things happen.

But the British Library has closed stacks. Readers have to request the books, they don't get to wander willy-nilly around the library.

And - they're BRITISH! They're supposed to be GOOD at organization. I am SO DISAPPOINTED.

British People good at organization?

Whahahahahahaha!!!!!

This is the nation that invented and perfected the muddle through.

Maybe this is just to throw us off the trail. They've actually been stolen by a supervillain is amassing a library of arcane texts, with which to plot our doom.

Shhhhhsh.

Sarah Pi wrote: "Maybe this is just to throw us off the trail. They've actually been stolen by a supervillain is amassing a library of arcane texts, with which to plot our doom.

"

Yes, yessss! Yes, Sarah Pi, that must be it!

I can the villain now, wearing a smoking jacket, stroking the books...

This is very disappointing...while I have never kept a library book forever, I have been tempted to "lose" and pay the fee for out of print books that I really wanted and knew I would take care of better than "the public". I worry about books being lost forever and clearly that was a legitimate fear. But it's probably best that my selfish side is usually defeated by my kind and sharing side.

But the British Library has closed stacks. Readers have to request the books, they don't get to wander willy-nilly around the library.

Horrors!

I will now admit that somewhere at my mother's house there is a paperback that I took out of the library in San Antonio in 1985 and never managed to return when we moved. The fines were only five cents a day back then, so assuming they would charge me at that rate and not the current one, and that they still don't charge overdue for Sunday, I believe I would owe about $375.

Christy and All, On at least two occasions when I was a kid, I pretended to lose and then paid for a library book to keep that I did not know how to buy. Once I learned how to buy books, even if they weren't on the bookstore shelves, I bought my books without taking them.

Alchemy Bun? Somehow I pictured you in your smoking jacket stroking the medieval text on astronomy.....

If you stroke the alchemy text long enough, it turns into gold.

I was once very, very tempted to when the library had a copy of an out-of-print book by an author I love.

I couldn't do it. Later, a friend found a copy in a used bookstore for me. Thank goodness.

Once, a long time ago, I found myself skipping willy-nilly through a British library and absconded with the original, unabridged copies of the Bible (before the Vatican got a hold of it), notes from Gallileo, sheeves of drawings of some Leonardo guy, and the complete works of Berkeley Breathed.

Was I wrong to keep these? I think they're all holding up uneven coffee tables somewhere here.

Gasp! That's where the Berkeley Breathed went? The Vatican has been looking for the sacred original preachings of Billy and the Boingers for years.

Sherrie wrote: "Once, a long time ago, I found myself skipping willy-nilly through a British library and absconded with the original, unabridged copies of the Bible (before the Vatican got a hold of it), notes fro..."

Were you wearing a smoking jacket at the time, Sherrie?

Why yes, and a velveteen mask in charcoal grey. I think it had a monocle on it as well.

Aha!

My own life of crime has been delayed by my being unable to find just the right shade of smoking jacket.
But if I were a master criminal with the proper attire, I would immediately rappel into the University of Leeds and tiptoe away with this:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/adopt-a-b...

Jackie, I will recommend an excellent tailor that specializes in smoking jackets. Just pick out your perfect jacquard. ;)

Ooooh! I myself will be tiptoeing out of the Musee Conde with a little item known as Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry under my smoking jacket.

Here is the page for March.



Lust, lust, lust. Waaaaant!

I love that blue with the gold, Bunny.

It is unquestionably one of the most beautiful books in the world. Here is another page.

Also I will be skibbling out of the Bodleian with zisssss.

Alternatively, I would like to hide out in Powell's Bookstore, similar to what Claudia and Jamie do in From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, and read all night long.
They'd never catch me!

Hee hee!!

Not if I get there first Bun....tried to reproduce those once but not artistically good enough (or patient enough!!)

If the Book of Kells ever goes missing from the Trinity Library in Dublin, I shall deny everything.

::Whistles innocently::

skibbling????

Have you not met Eloise?



She is a six year old girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel, where she skibbles, skidders, slomps, sklonks, about the place. Series of books from the fifties.

I adore Eloise! But a temporary brain cramp caused no doubt by consorting with aliens has affected my memory. Thanks for the reminder.

I adore Eloise also!

Alternatively, I would like to hide out in Powell's Bookstore, similar to what Claudia and Jamie do in From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, and read all night long.
They'd never catch me!

Love that book. Another one taking place in Powell's would be fun. Doing it would be even more fun. Powell's is on my wish list as a vacation destination.

Me too....have used Eloise as my avatar from time to time.....

::Passes Bruce the alien brain spot remover::

Scrub, Scrub, Scrub. Ah, all better now. Thanks, Bun.

More than 9,000 books are miss...


9,000 "It's not exactly a pack of peanuts Tyrone!!!"
Someone knows ,someone knows everything!!!
Jackie, the British Library, not exactly Tip -Top.ehhh?
I'd love a part in the search and rescue

Awesome title change!!@!

Danielle wrote: Jackie, the British Library, not exactly Tip -Top.ehhh?
I'd love a part in the search and rescue

GREAT idea, Danielle!
I volunteer to help look for the missing books! I wouldn't need to be paid, I'd do it for plane fare and room and board.

Jackie, it's the Germans who are famed for their organization skills. The British are famed for making everything look appropriate. The French get kudos for convincing the world that garbage looks fashionable.

I once "lost" a book from my school library. I was very careful about it, though. I checked out the book at the beginning of the year, loved it, and noticed it had not been checked out in two years previous to me. I returned it then, but I'd visit it every so often. Near the end of the year I noticed no one had checked it out after me. So I checked it out again, "lost" it, and paid the fine. I'm glad I did, because I've never seen another copy.

I also "traded" a book while I was in England. We stayed at a very spiffy resort hotel that was once a manor house dating back to Tudor times. The once glorious library had long ago been gutted and the shelves filled with leather bound farm reports and various things bought because they looked good, not because they were readable. The exception was a Georgette Heyer hardback I very much wanted. As it happened, the hotel library had two copies of the book. So, while touring around, I hit upon a used bookstore and purchased a little trilogy of inexpensive, but nice looking, fiction books of one sort or another, and slipped them into the place of one of the Heyer books, which later went home with me.

I don't consider it stealing. I consider it diversifying.

But, I swear, I did NOT pull off the British Library Heist! In fact, it was the British Museum bookstore that got almost $300 out of ME (plus the cost to ship home 70Lbs of irresistible books).

You're right, it IS the Germans that are supposed to be orderly. What was I thinking?

I hate libraries that are just supposed to LOOK good. I once heard that Barbara Streisand was having her library done in earth tones. Argh! That's what wallpaper is for, not books.

Very creative trading there, Sherri. I think I'd have been tempted to do the same, especially since the hotel library had two copies.

As for not being the culprit of the 9,000 book heist, you could have easily slipped a couple of the missing titles in with the rest of the books you shipped home.

A few books here, a few books there... It was clearly a GANG of book thieves.

:::looks around suspiciously:::

A gang of book thieves with VERY deep pockets.

I know how you feel about designer libraries. Just recently I've run into a couple of places that sell books by the linear foot so designers can "stage a library" for their clients. And they offer bindings in color palletes.

I am still not sure if this makes me want to weep, or slaughter someone with librarians scissors and book paste. The last time this happened, it was at a halfway decent antiquarian book store in Boston. ARRRRRGGGGHHHH

Jackie, in one of my favorite movies "Auntie Mame", Gloria -- an Upper Richmond Girl's School Girl, Top Drawer -- and her perfect clenched teeth come into Mame's apartment, which is currently full of books as Mame has gone literary, and says "Books are awfully decorative, aren't they?"

I remember that scene, Sherri. That was the first clue that she was no good for the boy.

I also remember the revenge, where Auntie Mame has installed hydraulic stools in her place and is torturing the girl's family with them.
Bwa ha ha!!!

YAY! Someone else who's seen that movie! I knew I loved you, Jackie :D

Last year it seemed I couldn’t open a magazine without seeing design articles suggesting I arrange books by color, stack books horizontally, or (the most horrifying) place them in the shelf spine-in so it’s just a giant wall of beige. What happens if someone actually wants to get to a book to, I don’t know…read it?

Love you too, Sherri!

You know the secretary who LIVES in Auntie Mame, i.e. goes out and has a wild night on the town, and returns home drunk, pregnant, and (we find out later) married?
Well, I've wondered if that was the inspiration for the movie Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Which I haven't seen, so this is really idle speculation...