Beginning some time in the mid-1990s, hundreds of items, including a 1635 Mercator atlas valued at $8,000, disappeared from the Kenyon College library in Gambier, Ohio. Now, nearly three years after authorities found the atlas in the home of former library circulation supervisor David Breithaupt, the college has won a $1-million judgment against him and his accomplice Christa Hupp, whom a jury found liable for “unjust enrichment and conversion,” namely for stealing the library items and selling them on Ebay.
The Columbus Dispatch reported April 14 that library property sold on Ebay included Voyage to South Sea ($1,925); a late-1700s government reprint of the Declaration of Independence ($4,250); and a rare edition of astronomer Ptolemy’s Almagest ($4,750). The disappearances were first discovered in April 2000, when an alert Georgia college librarian realized that a Flannery O’Connor letter listed for sale on Ebay by Hupp matched a photocopy of the document Kenyon had provided him in 1993.
Daniel Temple, Kenyon vice-president for library and information services, told American Libraries that Breithaupt and Hupp requested a new trial following the verdict—maintaining that the library fabricated the whole story to cover up the fact that staff had thrown the valuable materials into the trash, where they claim to have found them—but the motion was denied. The FBI is investigating and trying to locate the stolen items; criminal charges may also be filed.
Posted April 21, 2003.