ABSTRACT
Libraries, despite the cloistered air which surrounded them in earlier times, have not been exempt from it. Its corollary, security, soon followed and has been enforced or neglected in varying degrees across the centuries. Today the situation is such as to give rise to alarm not simply because thefts cost money but in terms of their cost to scholarship and, all too frequendy, to the nation’s heritage. The literature from the viewpoint of the librarian is in general dispiriting when it is not simply alarming. Ideally, a Library Security Officer should be appointed but in reducing staffing situation there are limits to what staff may be invited to do. Librarians have generally sought to safeguard the privacy of users, not to disclose who reads what. Having said that, borrowing records and faculty cooperation brought two very senior members to book in Manchester, enabling the library to pinpoint the individuals, both ‘in’ for chairs, responsible for the mutilation of certain books.
