A U.S. district court judge sentenced a Chicago woman to three years of probation January 30 and ordered her to pay restitution fees of $381,595 for the theft of more than 300 rare books in the early 1990s from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. As part of her plea agreement, Mimi Meyer, 57, agreed to provide information about the sale of the books as well as return materials still in her possession.
Meyer came under suspicion and was dismissed in September 1992 when a Ransom library staffer found a rare book from the stacks in the office where she had worked as a volunteer conservator since 1989. However, no specific thefts were discovered until 2001 when a collection of poetry by Francesco Petrarch, published in Venice in 1514 by Aldus Manutius and marked as missing in UT’s catalog, was put up for auction by Swann Galleries of New York.
Gallery officials told Austin-based FBI agents that Meyer was the seller and said she had brought 46 other books to them for consignment over the years, according to the February 1 Austin American-Statesman. The FBI suspects Meyer sold stolen books to Heritage, Pacific Book Auctions, and Sotheby’s in New York for nearly $400,000. Although the center’s librarians are still trying to determine whether they can recover all the missing titles, some that have been returned include a quarto edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, Japanese art books, two early editions by 17th-century Italian printmaker Stefano della Bella, and works by Lewis Carroll.
“The true victims of library thefts are the public, students, faculty, and researchers who have been denied access to these materials,” said Ransom Center Director Thomas F. Staley, who added that the library’s decade-long reviews and upgrades of internal security “decrease the possibility of such occurrences” happening again.
Posted February 6, 2004.