[DCRM-L] records for stolen materials

[Matthew C. Haugen]

Hi all,

In the course of a broader review of our records for manuscripts, I notice
we have a handful of records in our online catalog for some of the
manuscripts we know to have been stolen
<https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/08/us/manuscript-mystery-22-rare-works-vanish-from-columbia.html>
in
1994, and not (yet🤞) recovered. For missing items from general
collections, we normally also suppress the record from the OPAC until such
time as it is reinstated or replaced.

It seems these thefts were reported to ABAA and ExLibris-L
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1300/J111v38n01_10?needAccess=true>at
the time, and that the broadcasting of the theft did help
with identification and recovery of some of the materials by dealers.

For the ones still missing, does it also make sense to keep these records
visible in our OPAC, even though the material can't actually be found or
used? The records have notes "Stolen from Columbia University Rare Book and
Manuscript Library in 1994" and I think continuing to display the records
could similarly aid in identification/recovery, and also for the sake of
potential users who find descriptions of these MSS in secondary sources, so
they know that we don't in fact have the materials (as opposed to them
simply being uncataloged or unfindable in the OPAC), so they don't waste
their time and money coming to consult something we don't have. For the
moment, these records misleadingly show up in the OPAC as requestable by
users, but I'm trying to fix that. Or, we could suppress the records. For
context, we're on the FOLIO ILS, with a Blacklight-based OPAC interface.

Do others have an institutional practice for deciding whether to display or
suppress records for missing or stolen materials?

Thank you!

Matthew

-- 
Matthew C. Haugen
Rare Book Cataloger | Columbia University Libraries
matthew.haugen at columbia.edu | 212-851-2451 | he/they
<https://universitylife.columbia.edu/pronouns>
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