MISSING BOOKS

Southland Times, Issue 21716, 31 May 1932, Page 5

MISSING BOOKS

INVERCARGILL PUBLIC LIBRARY. VARIED LITERARY TASTES In common with other centres the Invercargill Public Library has suffered loss through the depredations of book thieves, 55 volumes being found missing from the shelves of both the lending and reference departments at 'he annual stocktaking in September. This total is made up as follows: Lending (fiction) 38 Lending (class-books) 7 Reference 10 Totals 55 Referring to these losses in his annual report, the Librarian (Mr H. B. Famall) states that the above figures for the lending department were very much higher at the time, but since then at least 40 volumes have been returned. This shows that some subscribers borrow books they are not entitled to, their method being to return the book or books to some part of the library other than where they belong, placing them on the wrong shelf or else pushing them behind a row _of books. Nine volumes reported missing last year have been returned to the library. , . “In spite of special vigilance it is impossible to put a stop to petty thieving,” states the librarian. “In addition to the above I find the mutilation of books is still going on, in spite .of all our efforts to prevent it. It is most annoying and disheartening to put an expensive book on photography containing beautiful specimens of the best known artists work on the shelves, and the next day to have it brought back with a picture of a well-known talkie actor cut out of it. The only remedy I can think of is to place the whole fine art section under lock and key.”

In conversation with a Times reporter yesterday, Mr Farnall explained that “Modem Photography,” the book referred to above, had only been on the shelves for 24 hours before it was discovered that a portrait of Gary Cooper had been removed from it, apparently by some female admirer. Another book which was eagerly sought after, by book thieves was John Wisden’s “Cricketers Almanack” which had been stolen for three years in succession a short time after it had been placed on the shelves. The current edition and Gibbons’ Stamps of the World” (1932) and certain other volumes were now kept by the librarian in his office so that supervision could be exercised over the people making use of them. The tastes of the book thieves are widely-varied as will be seen from the titles of the following books missing from the reference library:—“Enquire Within Upon Everything”; “More Secret Remedies”; “Air Annual, 1930”; “Motor Cycles and how to manage them”; “Lubbock’s Blackwell Frigates”; “Lubbock’s Colonial Clippers”; Johnson Medal Collector; Steward A.B.C. of War Medals; and Virgil, Vol. 1. (Loeb Classics). A particularly daring theft is that of the “Air Annual, 1930.” This is a very large and expensive book, half the cost of which was contributed by the local Aero Club. The class books missing are as follows: “How to Use Your Mind” (Kitson); ‘Learning to Swim” (Swaffer); “Book of Rothamsted” (Hall); “Refereeing One Thousand Fights” (Corri); “Camper’s Handbook” (Holding); "Adventures at Golf” (Bateman); “Human Drift” (London); “Green Pastures” (Connelly), and “Seventy Years a Showman” (Sanger). "Lady, This is Love” (de Mesquita), which was also included in the ranks of the missing, was found in a local shop on Saturday and returned to the library.