I’m the kind of scholar who works with one volume of records for weeks at a time, so now I understand why archivists are happy to let me come and read even outside of official days/hours. . . (and I gift more than a crummy box of cookies from a convenience store too, BTW.)

My husband used to be a collector (and still does in one particular area unrelated to his archives) but he views it as unprofessional to personally collect in the focus areas of his archives, even though he used to do so. But I don’t think there is any official code of conduct in those terms for archivists, just his own moral code.

If only leftists and progressives had their guts. . .

Now I want to post that sign all over Tea Party and other right-wing forums….

But maybe he read one of my favorite novels — A.S. Byatt’s Possession — which has everything to do with theft from the archives. Even though the villain is a collector rather than a true scholar, and the hero does ‘fess up at the end.

Our local untrained history buff-local historian isn’t allowed in any archives or library in the area. Seems a lot of archivists and librarians and others are waiting for him to die so that they may retrieve all the items he decided to take home for safekeeping. According to one librarian, he believes that the stuff is in better hands since he knows the “real” value.

I’m always asked what I, as a material culture studies type, collect. I don’t. I really don’t have the money or the time, but I think it’s a problematic position for a historian. Having worked with collectors I understand the quest. And I’ve had to review many a book about a type of object (needlework, for example) in which the author-collector-expert has depended on current market values to frame the historical interpretation. Drives me nuts.

I’m fascinated that bail was withheld. With no priors, a permanent home, and presumably a decent bank account (and the value of his own collection), has the judge watched too many episodes of “Hoarders”? What’s up with that?

Re: denial of bail: I would guess that they believe that’s the best way to make sure they find as many of the documents this guy stole as possible. If he’d been out on bail, he could burn them, ship them, fence them or hand them off to someone else to do the legwork. I am assuming, of course, that there were probably many more docs than what were found in the locker!

Seriously, I know of quite a few stories about stolen archival material, including one where it was an archivist stealing material. I also have experienced visiting an archive to look at documents on a particular theme and having them all be missing. And, I don’t mean there was a file missing (which happens all the time), but rather individuals letters that all related to the same theme were missing from a wide variety of files. I told the archvist about the first few, but she was getting more and more upset, so I just stopped telling her. Who knows where they went…