Entry #20

• Dawar, Anil and Kennedy, Maev.  (2009)  "British Library Mislays 9,000 Books."  The Guardian.
• Accessible online at http://bit.ly/2nkyoZZ

This is an article I stumbled across while beginning some research into library security.  And how does a title like this not grab your eye?  9,000 books?  Missing??

The British Library reported the losses, 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."  While I wondered if this article belonged in my history log, I decided to add it because look at all that history that was lost!  The librarians place theft low on the list, listing all the usual reasons something goes missing in the little public library I work in--misplaced on shelves, something happening to the spine label, an item pulled for repair but never location never marked, or a change never actually getting saved in the catalog.  This article doesn't specify the time range these items were lost in (it does mention losses from the library's move in 1998), so I don't know what rate all this history was lost.  A spokesperson from the library security firm SA Secure remembered a small library he consulted at lost a fifth of its collection in four years.

I remember the story of Panizzi, whose entire career at the head of the British Library was spent organizing the collections.  I think of my library who converted from Dewey Decimal to WordWise.  What is the best way to properly organize and thus preserve these materials, to prevent such loss?  Or is such loss just inevitable?  (Which does seem to be the case when 650km of shelving and 150m items, that are also being moved by the millions back and forth to reading rooms, are involved.)  I wonder if digitization is one answer.  If the materials were digitized, researchers could peruse an item without it ever needing to be removed from the shelf.  Only librarians would have access, which would cut down on misplacement upon return, a location change not getting scanned, a label falling off due to constant handling, or just plain theft.

The entrance to the British Library, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons:
http://bit.ly/2nJw4fX