(Please don't) steal this book

I love doing collection development work in general, but one rather depressing task is ordering replacements for missing books. In the routine life of a library, of course, books go missing due to misshelving or otherwise disappearing into the void of book carts and processing shelves. But some books certainly are stolen, and I often wonder why. The most obvious motive for theft is financial gain, but the average library book has minimal resale value (or at least it takes rather a lot of effort to resell it). I suspect that the majority of stolen books are taken by people who actually want to read them.

As a Political Science liaison librarian, I expect certain titles to disappear. I've already reordered Barack Obama's books a few times, and anything related to politically-charged current events is more likely to be pocketed. But most of the replacement books that I request are more routine, dealing with topics like German foreign relations, party politics in India, or theories of civil society; in other words, books that students read in their classes and use to write their assignments. Pretty mundane stuff. So I'm not sure what motivates these thefts.

Maybe students just need to keep the books longer than the standard borrowing time. Or maybe they're in too much of a rush to bother with checking them out. Or maybe the motivation is deeper: the theft is a small way to fight against the authoritarianism of the establishment. Maybe it's a protest against the outrageous prices of textbooks.

One of my talented and seasoned colleagues has noted that books are more likely to disappear if we have more than one copy on the shelf. Perhaps people don't feel guilty taking a book home permanently if the library will still have a copy or two.

I hate the feeling of having to replace books that I know I ordered only a few months ago. It's true that the books might turn up later in the semester when the "unauthorized borrower" has finished with them, but I don't like to delay in buying a replacement. If I've been notified that the book is missing, it means that someone is looking for it, and it may have already been missing for a while. So I take the risk that we'll end up with duplicate copies to try to meet the needs of our users. Replacement work feels so wastefulness in terms of money and staff time, but more than that, sometimes it almost makes me wonder why we bother in the first place.

Another interesting behaviour is the practice of hiding books. I once heard an anecdote about a student who was meeting a group in one of the library's study rooms. As the other students were gathering in the room, one of the group members stood up on a chair and retrieved a stack of books that had been stashed back against on a ledge near the ceiling of the room. The student thought this was entirely normal, but I, in my naïveté, was shocked. Why not just borrow them?

Library staff frequently find books tucked away in nooks and crannies in ways that imply deliberate hiding. Again, the reason for this alludes me. Was the book so difficult to find to begin with that someone left it in a place that could be found again easily? Is it a purposeful attempt to hinder classmates from using important materials? Or is it just too inconvenient to borrow the books?

In a piece in Library Journal (April 1, 2005), David Isaacson suggests that absented-minded thieves—including those who accidentally or deliberately steal library books because of their love of reading—should be embraced by libraries. Which I can go along with, I suppose. But what about people who are not motivated by money but can't be bothered with borrowing books legitimately?

What can libraries do to reduce the problem of theft? Tighter security? Longer borrowing periods? More convenient check-out options? More copies of popular titles? Fewer copies? A guilt-tripping campaign to deter casual thieves?

However, on a positive note, at least thefts prove that library users find our materials to be desirable!

Interesting side note: this Februrary 2009 article from the Times online lists the top 10 books that are most commonly stolen from bookstores in the UK. The list does not reflect the most frequently borrowed books in libraries; apparently maps and travel guides are the favourites of thieves. Perhaps convenience is a factor that motivates theft here as well...