Larceny at the library

'MY NAME is Forbes Smiley," reads a website about early maps, atlases, and globes. ''I work for collectors and institutions helping them build interesting, and often important, collections of early maps and atlases relating to the discovery and settlement of North America."

Missing is a troubling update: In June, Smiley was arrested and charged with stealing rare maps from Yale University. Other libraries Smiley has visited have also confirmed that maps are missing from their collections. This includes the Boston Public Library, where an ongoing inventory has revealed that 10 maps worth $165,000 are missing. One of the maps in Smiley's possession appears to belong to the library, according to the BPL's president, Bernard Margolis.

On Tuesday, E. Forbes Smiley, a resident of Martha's Vineyard, went to court in New Haven and pleaded not guilty to larceny charges related to the Yale maps.

The thefts are a bruising reminder that, in addition to being rich havens of human thought, libraries must also be secure strongholds, taking aggressive measures to protect rare holdings.

Smiley was a regular visitor at the Boston Public Library and attended map shows, according to Margolis. Smiley even helped Lawrence Slaughter, a computer expert, build a map collection that was eventually donated to the New York Public Library in 1997.

Smiley's website lists rare maps for sale at a range of prices. One, of Boston, is described as ''the earliest surviving plan of the city of Boston, and also the first engraved plan of any American city printed within the boundaries of the present United States. Only the third map of any kind printed in British America, and the second from a copper-plate." The price: $185,000.

The case against Smiley was made when a Yale librarian spotted the blade from an X-acto knife on the floor of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, near where Smiley was sitting. A police officer confronted Smiley and allegedly found that the dealer had a number of maps, several of which belonged to Yale.

Libraries must guard against an array of thieves, including, sadly, staffers and known experts. In the past, librarians in America and Europe have covered up thefts, fearing bad publicity that would discourage donors. But today the tendency is to publicize thefts in order to discourage thieves and make it easier to recover stolen items.

The rare books and manuscripts section of the American Library Association lists what amounts to a 19-year police blotter of thefts, from 1987 to 2005, on its website. The list includes several thefts at Harvard and a previous theft at Yale. Among the more infamous criminals is Gilbert Bland, who stole maps from rare book collections in libraries across the country during the 1990s. Bland and his wife ran a rare maps shop in Florida. In 1996, he was arrested and jailed. Law enforcement officials recovered 150 stolen maps. But Bland spent only a year and a half in prison. The story of his crimes is told in the nonfiction book ''The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime," by Miles Harvey.

To determine the extent of recent losses, staffers at the Boston Public Library are in the midst of taking inventory. It's a demanding process of reviewing call slips to see what books and materials Smiley used, checking bibliographic references to see what these materials should contain, then doing a close examination to determine whether anything is missing from the books.

The library is also increasing overall security. Background checks of employees are already standard practice. And Margolis says the library is in the process of installing state-of-the-art security technology. To protect the library, he won't comment on specific technological details. Mayor Menino and interested philanthropists should make sure that the library has the necessary funding to do a tough balancing act: protecting rare holdings while keeping them fully accessible to the public. It would be a shame if these thefts forced the library to limit access.

Professor Sidney Berger of Simmons College says that libraries have many security options. A professor of English and communication who also teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Berger points to simple and high-tech measures that include arranging reading rooms so library staff can look down tables with ease instead of at patrons' backs. He points to the use of video cameras, human surveillance, and heat, sound, and motion detectors.

Training for staffers is essential: They have to be vigilant of both colleagues and library users. Libraries can also mark maps and other rare materials with rubber stamps that leave deliberately easy-to-see marks. The monetary value of the document is not compromised, Berger argues, because once it's in a library, a document's worth is measured only in its research value. Berger also says libraries use invisible marks like microstamps and microtags.

Digital images or other copies of rare collections can also help, increasing access to documents and books while keeping them safe and eliminating some of the wear and tear of human handling.

As head of special collections at the University of California at Riverside, Berger also worked closely with police, making the case that law enforcement efforts weren't just about protecting old books but rather about defending the country's cultural heritage.

Indeed, library thefts are not victimless crimes or the stuff of eccentric anecdotes. They are attacks that should be defended against and prosecuted to protect the public's intellectual wealth and well-being.