In library news

A library found it was missing $8 million of its rarest items. Nearly three years later, a man on the inside admitted to selling the items to a local bookstore

Okay, that's not a library-related story you see every day

Suspect in tarantula theft held on bail

A Westminster [Maryland] man was held on $10,000 bail on charges he stole a pet tarantula from the Westminster branch of the Carroll County Public Library Wednesday.

Thanks, Steven, for the link. :)

I hope they recover them

You may have heard that five paintings were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. These include a Matisse and a Picasson. To view which ones are missing, check out:

What France's stolen masterpieces tell us

A contributing factor was that the museum's alarm system has been broken since March, so the thief only had to snip a padlock, smash a window, and then cut the paintings from their frames. Estimates for the paintings are $123 million, but they are really quite priceless.

They include:
'Pastoral' by Henri Matisse (1906)
'Olive Tree Near L'Estaque' by Georges Braque (1906)
'Dove with Green Peas' by Pablo Picasso (1911)
'Still Life with Candlestick' by Fernand Leger (1922)
and
'Woman with Fan' by Amedeo Modigliani (1919)

They'll be hard to sell in the art world, but a private collector might buy them. Hopefully, they will be recovered soon.

Indeed

Viewpoint: Why the Auschwitz sign is irreplaceable by Rabbi Andrew Baker.

There can be no copies or reproductions; visitors must see only what was real. In that way they will be bear witness to the very objects and structures which in turn remain the mute eyewitness to what happened there.

Perhaps that is what makes the theft of this sign so shocking and essentially irreplaceable. Auschwitz is surely the very antithesis of a cathedral - not a spiritual temple evoking heaven but a hellish factory of death.

Yet, in this opposite universe those scrolled letters were its altarpiece, and its theft a desecration.

???

Someone has stolen the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign from the gateway to Auschwitz. This is a tangible piece of history and hopefully it will be returned quickly to the site.

Crazy

$21 theft, $1 million bond

A 41-year-old Kentucky man was charged with disorderly conduct at a motel, plead guilty and was sentenced to a day in jail in Hamilton County, Ohio. That should have been the end of it, right?

But he had a theft charge on his record from 18 years ago. A judge, Richard Bernat, has ordered him to be held on a $1 million bond and refused to reduce it. Gosh, he must have taken people's life savings or something.

No. Authorities say that back in 1990 he bought items at a store valued at $21.64, paying the bill with rolls of dimes. Store employees later discovered they were rolls of pennies, and he was charged with theft.

Not to play the race card, but I'd really like to know if Gary Weaver is black. What on earth is going on in the mind of this judge that a bond would be set so high for a misdemeanor from 18 years ago? Why is this man in an overcrowded jail when there are plenty of violent criminals to make an example of? And shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on this? This is so weird.

Archivists gone bad

Man arrested in eBay sale of historic documents

Daniel Lorello, a department of education archivist for the state of New York, was arrested for stealing documents and artefacts since 2002--and about 400 items in 2007 alone. A history buff alerted authorities when he found Lorello selling items on eBay. Police recovered about 400 items from his home, estimated to be about 90% of what he stole; the rest was probably sold.