Man in court over theft of documents

Archiver · Post by **Archiver** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:21 pm

From the BBC

A man has appeared in court in Edinburgh charged with the theft of 288 documents from the Scottish Catholic Archives in Edinburgh. He posed as a postgraduate student in order to get access to them.

How did they not notice? Are people not supervised in the reading room?!

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 3:02 pm

They probably thought he was only stealing wheel barrows.

Alan

theKiwi · Post by **theKiwi** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 4:34 am

Or Bicycles

Roger <---- heard that joke both ways.

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:41 am

A worrying situaiton that raises many questions....

How on earth did he manage to rip pages out of things...was no one looking, was no one listening? Most archives I've been in are quiet and there is usually at least one member of staff about...
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotlan ... 3985051.jp

As the reading room did not have a member of staff present, the thefts went unnoticed until Fallon admitted the crime to police, after they discovered documents from other archives at his home in London.

Many archives do not alllow you to take in bags, even handbags, so where did he stash the documents?
More info here: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotlan ... 3985051.jp

After requesting access to a range of documents, which were then brought into the reading room, Fallon ripped out pages and hid documents inside his notebook, which he then smuggled out at the end of the day.

Was no ID asked for? e.g. a student card.

Why was he doing this? Is he a collecter of documents? Or is it some kind of anti-archive or anti-religion statement or what?

And most worryingly, there is no mention of where the stolen material is located now...was it recovered or is it lost? Destroyed? Sold on e-bay?
It says here:
http://www.stv.tv/content/news/main/dis ... am_0804151

Forty-year-old Oliver Fallon stole and tore up nearly 300 records from the Scottish Catholic Archives in the capital's West End.

and in the Scotsman: (link as above)

Once he was caught, Fallon sent a letter apologising and returned £14,325 worth of records. But the damaged documents needed almost £5,000 worth of repairs, while 132 documents were still missing. These are worth £12,000.

It is also worrying that the archive did not notice the items were missing until alerted later to the nature of their visitor...I always made the niave assumption that archives looked over things before returning them to the shelves... if there were six sheets in a bundle given out to a researcher, they'd check there were six sheets returned etc.

Arrgghhh.

Best wishes
Lesley

Archiver · Post by **Archiver** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:49 am

What they thought they were doing, having an unsupervised searchroom is beyond me. It's one of the most basic things!! Bet they're a lot more security conscious now.

And yes, items should be checked on their return to the shelves.

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:37 pm

The great irony of the situation is that people and/or organisations donate items to archives believing that those items will be stored correctly and looked after in an appropriate manner so that they might be preserved for future generations.

Best wishes
Lesley

Hugo · Post by **Hugo** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 2:58 pm

What surprises me is that no-one has asked 'Why did he do it?'

Why travel all the way from London to do this.

Post by **paddyscar** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 4:18 pm

Not everyone who removes a section of a page or a whole page makes noise. I've watched them do it many times - with and without any tools. The condition of the paper and bindings may have deteriorated over years and loose pages are easy targets.

Ideally every item that is removed from archive storage should be reviewed before re-shelving, but time and staff are not likely available.

That does not excuse a lack of record keeping and identification issues; and where are security cameras? When every corner store has a security system, there's no reason any archive should not be able to have multiple cameras trained on visitors.

Having said that, there are always those who enjoy a challenge, not for the proceeds, but for the satisfaction of beating the system.

Even modern books are vandalised by those unwilling to spend 10 cents or 5p on a photocopy - never mind that - I worked in a corporate library where it was not unusual to have pages/items removed and those people didn't even have to pay for the copy

Frances

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Sun May 04, 2008 11:08 pm

Looks like the current archives are perhaps to be spilt between various locations, or going to move altogether:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7380046.stm

Best wishes
Lesley

smithjohn192837 · Post by **smithjohn192837** » Mon May 05, 2008 12:32 pm

> Was no ID asked for? e.g. a student card.

> Why was he doing this? Is he a collecter of documents? Or is it some
> kind of anti-archive or anti-religion statement or what?

> And most worryingly, there is no mention of where the stolen material
> is located now...was it recovered or is it lost? Destroyed? Sold on
> e-bay?

You are quite right Lesley, of course the Scottish Catholic Archives lets anyone through the door without id to rummage through the storerooms and do what ever they want. Have you even been there yourself? If you had you would know the form filling and id you have to provide.

More news about this is here
http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Chur ... 4048633.jp

Best wishes
John

TalkingScot.com

Man in court over theft of documents

Man in court over theft of documents

theft at scottish catholic archives