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Oopsies: Missing BPL prints found
By adamg on Thu, 06/04/2015 - 4:02pm
Amy Ryan, BPL Conservation Officer Lauren Schott and the prints.
The Boston Public Library reported this afternoon an employee found the two prints that had gone missing more than a year ago. They weren't stolen, they were just misfiled.
The Rembrandt and Dürer were found together in Row 14B, Bay 3 on Shelf 2, approximately 80 feet from where the items should have been filed. Fourteen staff members searched 180,000 of the print stack’s 320,000 items (including 200,000 prints and drawings in the Print Collection and 120,000 chromolithographs), totaling 38 rows of the 60 rows of print stacks, or about 60% of the inventory. Nine offices, work rooms, and reading rooms had also been searched. The Durer and Rembrandt have been refiled.
Suddenly outgoing BPL President Amy Ryan announced the find not long after at-large City Councilor Steve Murphy called for all of the library trustees to quit immediately.
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Comments
BPL Art
This whole thing smells fishy to me. They find the art 24 hours after BPL Prez Amy Ryan resigns? Sounds maybe like somebody wanted her gone and temporarily misplaced the art? High drama.
Actually.....
Actually, if I was Amy Ryan, I would rescind my resignation immediately and sit around and wait for various apologies from members of the media & local politicians. This whole thing seemed a bit too much like a witch hunt.
Disagree
The fact still remains that they don't have a complete inventory of what they have, and can't seem to file things where they belong. Plus, the missing art has brought forth other incidents of things gone missing or things almost being thrown out.
It's finally coming out that the BPL isn't being run well, and if she stays that will still be over head and subject to hearings/investigations. Probably best to move on - the art being 'not lost' will be nice for her resume.
As related to me by someone close to the situation
Here is how bad it is: Several weeks ago, the BPL hired a low level $8/hr person to work at one of the Branches. Marty Walsh himself called Amy to angrily tell her “I had a person for that position. I want you to rescind the offer”. She refused, did not rescind the offer.
Late on Monday afternoon, Marty Walsh called Amy Ryan and was verbally abusive on the telephone, swearing and literally yelling at her. He sent his deputy to the Board Meeting on Tuesday to strong arm the Board and Amy. It was heated, the Board tried to defend her and point out her accomplishments, etc, but to no avail. It became clear that the Walsh Administration was going after Amy and as a result after the meeting she resigned.
So...
... we have (in essence) a thug as our mayor? What a disappointment.
(When this blew up, I figured that Walsh was looking at the library system as a potential patronage gold mine).
I am Jack's utter lack of
I am Jack's utter lack of astonishment.
The misplacing of artifacts happens everywhere
This phenomenon happens in libraries and museums all over the world.
http://gizmodo.com/5-times-important-artifacts-were-lost-and-found-in-mu...
http://mentalfloss.com/article/60536/11-things-lost-then-rediscovered-mu...
http://hyperallergic.com/102398/the-astounding-art-and-artifacts-museums...
When collections become as large as the BPL things get misplaced. To address this they would need a steep increase of funding to pay for all that extra manpower.
Never ascribe to malice
..that which can be explained by incompetence.
And Boston has an impressive endowment of incompetence that pays back with interest.
No.
This just happens sometimes in archives. A lot, actually, as someone has already pointed out.
Why'd it take so long?
Kind of incredible they are just being found now after it was known that they were missing for over a year? Speaks to systemic problems throughout the library - the article in this morning's Globe states that library staff had known for months that the work was missing before informing Amy Ryan.
Sounds like...
It was the sheer volume of items to go through (the article says 180k in inventory). To do an accurate search (one where you don't have to keep starting from square 1 because someone did something), I would expect you need some dedicated staff and a system. And it's not like you can rush through...
The BPL is the second largest
The BPL is the second largest library in the United States, holdings only exceeded by the Library of Congress.
My mother was a reference
My mother was a reference librarian at a small college for 30 years. Even at that small scale, things go missing and turn up in the stacks. It's all they can do to set aside time and money for a periodic inventory. Imagine how much worse it is at the second largest library in the US.
Emily Litella said it best
"Never mind."
Oh Good!
Now can we starting working on these?
https://digboston.com/la-or-bust/
This worked out well for Walsh
Another respected professional hired by his predecessor dustbinned, to be replaced by some mayoral buddy, no doubt.
She wasn't hired by Menino,
She wasn't hired by Menino, but by the board. Menino hated the fact that he didn't have direct control over the BPL, and he and the previous president HATED each other. Which is why I'm assuming Walsh is using Murphy as his mouthpiece, to get the current board to resign, so that he can stack it with people in his pocket, and therefore have sway over the next BPL president. Which would be a nightmare.
Ugh
I hope you're not right. I will lose respect for this administration if that is what happens.
ah, yes, bernie
.
New York State Librarian Bernard A. Margolis
New York State Librarian and Assistant Commissioner for Libraries
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/library/about/statelibrarian.htm
Mr. Margolis' achievements as Boston Public Library President include
. expansion of branch library hours;
. appointment of a children's librarian in every branch;
. creation of a nationally recognized Homework Assistance Program and online tutoring program;
. implementation of Reading Readiness to prepare preschoolers for school success;
. creation of local history centers in branch libraries;
. creation of the award-winning Norman B. Leventhal Map Center and the
. development of a collection conservation program.
Under Mr. Margolis' leadership, Boston Public Library
. secured millions in federal funds for technology improvements and
. many foundation grants,
. designated gift funds, and
. major bequests.
He led the effort to
. restore and renovate the historic central library building and
. established a critical repair fund, allowing the Library to address building and equipment repairs in a timely manner.
Well, having jumped the gun
..and made a minor idiot of himself through an aide, you'd think he'd root for a state of art inventory control system and an audit of stacks... something actually useful.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And they all lived happily ever after.....
until the next time.
The whole episode makes
The whole episode makes Boston look bush league, thanks to the grandstanding tactics of Walsh and Murphy, who couldn't wait for the search to end before bullying up on an easy punching bag target. Things get misfiled in libraries all the time. Good luck on getting a quality candidate to replace Ryan after this farce.
Bush league
Boston politicians living up to the Hollywood image of Bostonians: loud, obstinate, uneducated, dumb, corrupt, and proud of it.
Time for some technology
Time for some RFID chips on all the art, maps and valuable books.
...
1) How would you attach a RFID to a 700 year old manuscript?
2) What benefit would you gain from doing so?
Just a guess but
Just a guess but
A.) Sticker on the back
B.) Alarm sounds if they leave the premise?
Sounds like you are
Sounds like you are unfamiliar with how easy it is to intentionally or otherwise mess with RFID tags. Not to mention how cardinal-sin-of-archiving it would be to stick one to something irreplaceable.
What?
A sticker? On the back of a 700 year old manuscript? You do realize that harms the thing you're trying to save, right? Adhesive is never without consequences.
So
1) Ruin a priceless artifact.
2) You've never been in a special collections room, have you?
Good point I was tired when I
Good point I was tired when I posted and assumed the sticker would go on a frame or something but that would defeat the purpose as a thief would just remove the frame. I have not been in a special collections room no.
How about something like this, where they are stored in RFID bins? Would this be plausible.
http://www.securarchiv.ch/en/paper-management/rfid-archiving-solution
yes
Generally, RFID is put on the box, file, or folio a valuable piece is in. With an original item that is not handled by the public, the RFID is less about security and more about inventory management.
Which is exactly the problem that occurred here.
No.
An RFID doesn't stop a human from putting the thing on the wrong shelf.
Metal shelving, however, does often hamper attempts to do a walk-by scan with an RFID reader.
I am currently unaware of a Boston-area library that uses RFIDs for their special collections inventory management. Both Houghton and the Beinecke, two of the largest holdings of medieval manuscripts in the US, just use a bar code system.
Yes, you are correct. Metal
Yes, you are correct. Metal shelving can sometimes interfere with RFID inventory. I can't think of any local libraries that uses RFID inventory. However, RFID tags are now pretty much the "standard" (loose quote) for new libraries.
From a friendly local librarian's perspective, I can tell you that RFID inventory tied into the library management system is extremely expensive to implement (our library's collection is 1/20th of BPL's size and it would cost us nearly $100K to implement) and still very manual. Someone has to link an RFID to tag to each item and linking it to the existing barcode and bibliographic record in the system. The current barcode system for inventory, which BPL uses, is still very manual and it requires each item to be scanned one by one; to be honest, many librarians use it to find items that are shelved out of order or items that were never checked in properly.
Inventorying special collections, such as this, is extremely difficult. Many items that may have been willed/donated have clauses in which the items can not be altered, merely preserved. Slapping a barcode sticker or an RFID tag would violate this.
It's going to take someone with management, a lot of money, and a lot of time to implement new inventory procedures and policies. Fortunately, for both the public's sake and the reputation of librarians, I don't think this incident will be swept under the rug.
You're right in that it doesn't stop a mis-shelving...
...but it does speed up inventory.
Even more basic
The BPL does not even have an actual inventory of its rare book/print/map collection much less a physical tracking system. To get the photographs of the previously thought missing items to provide to the police and press, the BPL had to go to other libraries and museums that had copies of them. The excuse for this has been that there is no budget to do an inventory, much less a photographic inventory, while the BPL publishes (here) on a daily basis photos of old Boston from its archives that it has spent millions scanning. Another anecdote is that in the course of clearing out space in the main Copley library so that the library can be used for event space (which I don't necessarily have an issue with), the library has been selling off excess books to used book vendors. Among these has been found several rare books that, although technically duplicates at the BPL, are worth tens of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, at least some of these have been recovered before final disposition. Considering the books that have been written about thefts from the BPL and the reports over the years of other things going missing, I'd say there is good reason to do some re-prioritizing over there.
Who were the previous owners?... before 1941
Before 1941 when Boston Public Library acquired the 1634 Rembrandt Self Portrait with Plumed Cap and Lowered Sabre, who were the previous owners over the centuries? Where are the Records of Provenance?
The BPL maintains provenance files...
...in the Fine Arts Department on the 3rd floor of the McKim Building. Ask one of the librarians to point you to the card file for "Art in the Boston Public Library," which covers provenance, location, condition, and other info.
Reference Desk attitude! 'tude interferes with library usability
Tried the Reference Desk at the Fine Arts Department of Boston Public Library to learn who owned the 1634 Rembrandt Self Portrait with Plumed Cap and Lowered Sabre over the centuries before BPL acquired it in 1941... no information provided there even after asking about any books or academic journals that have articles about the Rembrandt artwork.
And trying to get the lib to make available Records of Provenance...
The lady there should loose the attitude ! 'tude that interferes with Reference Desk usability!... beginning with paying better attention to an enquiry rather than responding off the mark, getting the enquiry wrong multiple times before getting a level of understanding about what's actually being asked at Reference Desk services.
It's not enough just to setup a Reference Desk. It's the people that matter. What are needed are better resources for the front line staff and staff that look forward to Reference Desk enquiries. And A Guide to Problematical Library Use for library users to share their hints, tips, pointers, ideas, suggestions, comment, questions about library usability. Like the responsive post before this one!
Getting reasonable help from unreasonable, unhelpful people
Try this.
Watch neurotypicals. Study them in their interactions with others, particularly in a service environment where help is needed. You can do it at the library, in a coffee shop, restaurant, wherever. Try imitating them. It's not easy. There's a lot of subtlety involved. Don't be a phony or untrue to yourself. But do use the interaction skills you observe. You're obviously smart enough. See if it doesn't get you better results, especially when dealing with people who are kinda sorta supposed to help you according to their job description, but might not be personally all that committed to doing so.
This is not snark. First of all, you're on the side of the good guys. Secondly, you will note that I refer to neurotypicals in the third person, not the first. Best of luck.
Treasured Curators/Librarians/BPLers
It goes to regarding our Boston Public Librarians like faculty are regarded at universities. BPL could provide better resources for front line staffers including customers services programming and more up to date telecommunications that don't have to restrict transactions to their seat at the desk. More opportunities for BPLers to publish or blog their expertise. More treasured Curators/Librarians/Staffers could be listed with information about their expertise for BPL Collections as do Museums list their Curators and Universities list their faculties
http://www.bpl.org/distinction/curator-profiles/
see also
B.P.L.P.S.A. Boston Public Library Professional Staff Association
http://bplpsa.info/contents/
The Real Sheet newsletter
http://bplpsa.info/contents/?page_id=92
? What's up with the mechanism at
http://soundarchives.bpl.org/
<3
<3
Quick technical note:
Quick technical note:
The archival photos you see posted here aren't actually from the BPL. (That's assuming you're talking about the "Where was this taken..." ones.) They're from the City Archives. Those are two entirely separate entities. Also, it hardly cost millions of dollars to scan the photos. Most libraries and archives use free labor (ie. interns) or pay a max of about $10 to the people who are scanning. Based on some research I did with the BPL's Flickr page earlier this year, I'd say they didn't spend much time or money on the project other than the bare essentials because the metadata is often wrong or severely lacking. (Maybe they're going back to fill this in later? I don't know.)
But yeah, it would be great to get the money to do a full inventory of their holdings - if such money existed.
amen.
.
So let me get this straight ...
One of the best librarians in the country was fired because - wait for it - someone misfiled something? Possibly before her tenure?
The silver lining: we're learning more about how Mayor Walsh operates.
Mis-filing is a rot that
Mis-filing is a rot that comes from the top down!
-Steve Murphy
But what kind of sandwich was
But what kind of sandwich was Amy Ryan eating when she got the call?
Maybe the lady who looks like
Maybe the lady who looks like John Henry in drag can misfile her resignation letter.
"the lady who looks like John Henry in drag "
That's the way to keep it classy....
Totally schmucky remark.
Oh $hit
We're gonna get caught.
Quick, put em back.
Glad the items have been
Glad the items have been found. However, this is most certainly an offense worthy of losing one's job. You just don't lose half a million dollars worth of art and not alert the authorities. These pieces belong to the public and they were lost under the supervision of a highly paid employee living in tax-payer subsidized housing who did nothing till the media got wind of it and public pressure came down on her. Unprofessional and unethical.
living in tax-payer subsidized housing?
living in tax-payer subsidized housing?
Which is why Susan Glover was
Which is why Susan Glover was placed on administrative leave. Amy Ryan reported the missing item to Police as soon as she found out about them.
Card Catalog with Annotations on back of cards. Digital Catalog.
a) Would it have anything to do with converting the paper Card Catalog to a Digital Catalog?... b) Why weren't the backs of the Cards in the old Catalog photocopied with all the Librarians' Annotations?... The old Card Catalog is as much a creative work as any great book. The old Annotations can provide additional clues.
Short answer
1) No.
2) Funding.
Hmmm
Hmm, despite the fact that the Prez of BPL resigned over this, I somehow how doubtful this will result in her being brought back.
Please tell me that we won't hear something similar...
from the Gardner Museum.
Then we'd really look like nitwits.
/snark
So much for my theory that
So much for my theory that Billy Bulger had them out for loan for his summer home on the Cape.
Boston Public Library
Sounds like Marty, "Rush to Judgement" Walsh Sneeds to apologise and beg for a retraction of that forced resignation
You must ...
... be kidding.
You have the moral high ground
Fight, don't quit. Even if you don't win you leave a mark.
D'oh!
They need the Dewey Decimal system for the prints......wait. they'd still get misfiled.
Stuff gets misfiled in libraries
When you're talking about millions or tens of millions of items, and many linear miles of shelf space, stuff gets misfiled all the time. Human error. And, In libraries where researchers have access to the stacks, it's even done deliberately You want personal unfettered access to that obscure 18th century Hebrew philosophical treatise for your own research and to keep it out of your competitors' hands? Just move it down a floor and stuff it in among the 1932 proceedings of the annual conference of the Transylvanian Cybernetic Society and it's all yours whenever you need to consult it.... until someone stumbles onto it and returns it to its proper home. Which might take a decade.
You can have your staff do "shelf reading" -- basically walk every row of every stack in the library, and pull every misfiled item onto a cart for reshelving. But that's expensive. Faced with budget pressure, you going to cut out buying new books, cut out after-school homework helpers in the branch libraries, or cut out shelf reading? So it doesn't get done often.
intentional misfiling?
I've never heard of anyone other than competitive pre-meds doing this (hiding books, tearing out key pages).
Does this happen in other fields?
Yeah, it does... .
Yeah, it does. Or at least that's the conventional wisdom among research librarians at academic libraries. They find mis-shelvings that are obviously personal stashes rather than errors. It's unclear whether the primary motive is to maintain easy access for yourself (at the expense of others), or whether the primary motive is to disadvantage competitors.
not a professional example, but...
the main library at the university where I did my masters was notorious for intentional misfiling: not by staff, but by students who were part of a bizarre church group. if there was a book they considered offensive for whatever reason (like Lolita), they would take it from its rightful place and move it to, say, the astrophysics section. very unchristian, I must say. every summer, the staff had to go through every goddamn book to see what had been hidden where it wasn't supposed to be, and what was genuinely lost.
I've encountered instances
I've encountered instances during shelf-reading (aka, library talk for going through the stacks and finding items improperly shelved) in which items NOT owned by the library are inserted in the "appropriate" stacks. Not naming names, but it seems to be religious group pamphlets, pro-life groups, etc. Never a dull day in the library.
Scholarly intrigue
It may not be the culprit here, but you're so right about the temptation for researchers and academics to find ways to keep scholarly finds to themselves.
Read A.S. Byatt's "Possession" for a fictional detective story version. Maybe not everyday but it happens. Not theft but it's soooo easy to misfile things in libraries.
Volunteers can't help
When I was out of work I inquired about volunteering at BPL to help with shelving books, etc. I was told that, in contrast to suburban libraries, in Boston this was not allowed. I don't know whether this was union job protection, concern for the security of the collection, or both.
If we could now just misplace
If we could now just misplace the Olympics bids for six months.
We need Library Police...
...with detectives and everything.
http://www.shigabooks.com/bookhunter.php
Call for
Mr. Bookman
So what you're saying is
that something needs to be done about problematic library usage?
Sweet Twitter spat going between David Bernstein and BostInno.
Bernstein criticized BostInno for jumping the gun on reporting this incident as a crime without any apparent law-enforcement source. He did a Nelson-like "Ha ha!" when the art turned up in the stacks, and instead of apologizing for it, BostInno is now calling him names like "obsolete".
Here's a hint, BostInno: Bernstein might be from old media, but he's got scads more cred as a political and media reporter and analyst than you've managed to accumulate in your short life. Responding to a fair criticism of your shitty reporting with social-media insults is just one tiny example of why.
Mr. DeLuca seems like....
... quite a douche. Bostinno doesn't seem like a site I'll be spending much time on.
It's glib sophomoric mediocrity.
Kinda like Dig.
Blue Mass Group is more geriatric mediocrity with flashes of excellence from individual diarists.
There are some very good comment makers too. Best Defense, Judy Meredith, J Conway and Hester Prynne are about as astute as anyone gets.
"ernie boch III" was completely repulsive, more like your basic goon comment flogger here.
There is also a great skeptic, Paul Simmons, who likes to poke holes in the whole faux progressive conceit.
And people in politics take it seriously. Elizabeth Warren shows up now and then. State Senator Jamie Eldridge is helpful. David's most valuable role is probably convening the whole thing. The design is archaic and funny.
Old school media people suffer from years of calculated dumb down design from the days when the model was top down gate keepers like Mindich and the Taylor family. They wrote for an imaginary readership and the locals were kindly enough to go along with it when alternatives took too much effort. Now that alternatives are everywhere, the remnant gate keepers like the globe are being abandoned.
And yet there is always room for excellence. Charles Pierce is as ink stained as they get, but his excellence as a writer and thinker put him at the side of Mark Twain. Part of it is that he is ballsy enough to just write and not sweat any dumb down calculations or cute pirouettes.
So much of media consumption here is looking for particular glimmers, diamonds in the coal bin.
Charlie Pierce....
... is a national treasure.
The others over at BMG are also really good.
Judy Meredith is a sagacious Beacon Hill watcher and voice of reason. J Conway did a study on an Olympic plan for Chicago.
Best Defense seems to be from the South Coast and goes overseas for humanitarian projects in places like Southeast Asia. He can take eyeglaze stuff like the details of masshole bond issues and actually make them interesting.
Paul Simmons is one of the best race relations analysts for the local scene you are likely to find. His skill at pointing out hypocrisy and inept implementations is as good as it gets.
It is like the full circle of gifted amateur media people who have unique insight from their time in various trenches and great writing skills making the Shirley Leung and Boston Inno circuit look very un-compelling, to be charitable.
People are doing better stuff for free as a gift to the community than people who get paid dumb money to stupefy us with pom pom waves.
Oh, man, if only this were eight months ago ...
I'd say the BostInno guy had a bright future at boston.com, but, to be honest, boston.com's calmed down quite a bit since then.
Hilary Sargent was on All In With Chris
Talking about boston.com, Hilary Sargent was on All In With Chris Wednesday talking about Usaama Rahim and JTTF.
I thought Bostinno was state media for Marty Walsh. I used to comment over there. It's a waste of time.
Things get misfiled in libraries and archives
ALL. THE. TIME. All the time. Constantly. Often.
Important things misfiled. Unimportant things misfiled.
Sometimes the misfile is understandable and traceable-- a letter filed under "Correspondence: Incoming: King Stephen" instead of "Correspondence: Outgoing: Stephen King." Or filed under "1902" instead of "1920."
But sometimes, when you panic, looking for a document or book you know your library owns, you aren't so lucky.
In archives and with print/photo collections, sometimes it's as simple as two papers getting stuck to each. If that photo of Curley happens to be in the queue to be refiled the same day as a bunch of Harvard 2010 graduation photos and gets intermingled, chances are you will not find it two years later when someone shows up looking for it-- why would anyone think to look in the Harvard graduation collection?
Shelving and refiling is done in most sizable public libraries by high school students and/or interns. Maybe a small contingent of library aids. Perhaps volunteers, if it's not a valuable collection. It is usually the lowest paid position, and can be boring beyond belief sometimes.
Most of the shelving in the library where I work now is handled by work-study students, and I think the world of them. But of course, I've found a handful of books shoved thoughtlessly on the wrong shelf because the worker got bored or wanted to leave or who knows-- but this is a smallish library, we shelf-read and do inventory regularly, and nothing valuable is in our general stacks.
And, key, everything is barcoded, so we can actually do an annual inventory.
I don't know if the BPL has ever had the money to do any sort of automated inventory control outside of the public stacks. It takes money and personnel, and the BPL rarely has enough of either.
The BPL has suffered from the fact that while much dough is raised for the building, the collections are treated as an afterthought. A lot of people do not realize that the Boston Public Library Foundation, of BPL Gala fame, only donates towards the maintenance of the building. Not the collections, or the books, just the building. Back when I worked there, during the early 90's recession, we definitely felt the loss of both city funds and collection development/maintenance donations because many people thought the library was getting masses of money from the Foundation.
Hah!
We can't find own home copy of Sondheim's Into the Woods DVD -- and we have only a relatively limited number of (sane) places to look -- so it must have been put someplace totally irrational and unexpected.
Thanks for the info that the gala does nothing to fund the _functions_ of the library.
Literary Lights,
the gala run by the Associates of the BPL, a different group from the Foundation, does fund preservation projects of rare books and other items in the collection. They fundraise and sponsor other events throughout the year.
Thanks you, cw! That's great!
So glad to hear it. I'll find it on twitter & amplify any of their fundraising drives.
From one librarian to another
From one librarian to another, I'm offering you a high-five! Inventorying and shelving a massive collection like the BPL is not for the weak.
amen
Can you imagine the army you'd need to get through that? Somehow, I don't see that funding coming through any day soon, no matter what Stephen"I'll Just Let My Ass Do The Speaking For Me" Murphy says.
That was me once upon a time
In high school I worked at the local library branch and I spent a lot of time starting at the start of a section and working my way to the end, getting it back to proper order. I could pull a carts-worth from adult fiction every time. 30 odd years later, I still get twitchy in bookstores and start re-homing the misfiles.
Ditto
(Only I worked in a library while in grad school). Also used to feel compelled to fix errors in record/CD/DVD sections of stores.
Yep
Yep, I'm a compulsive alphabetizer.
Heist Anxiety: The Myth Of Mass Media Outrage Over Stolen Art
Heist Anxiety: The Myth Of Mass Media Outrage Over Stolen Art
https://digboston.com/heist-anxiety-the-myth-of-mass-media-outrage-over-...
Questions for Murphy and Walsh
Have you ever been inside a library in your life?
Have you ever used a library to check out a book?
Will you apologize for your grandstanding ?
I think we already know the answers.