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Rare Chinese Books Stolen from Harvard

By Associated Press

Forty-one centuries-old Chinese books and two scrolls worth over $1 million are missing from Harvard-Yenching Library, which houses the largest collection of East Asian books outside Asia.

A rare book specialist at the Harvard University-owned library discovered in March that the books and scrolls—among the library’s most prized possessions—had been snatched from their protected perch in the rare book room.

“These are works of huge historic and literary importance,” Nancy Cline, head librarian of Harvard College, told the Boston Globe. “It’s very difficult to estimate their loss.”

Cline oversees the world’s largest academic collection of books. As soon as she learned of the theft, she contacted the FBI’s division of major investigations.

Neither the museum nor the authorities publicly acknowledged the theft or issued a statement.

Sometime this summer, however, the collection was registered in the Stolen Art File, a Web site that includes a Rembrandt painting stolen from Saint Bonaventure University in Olean, N.Y., and a 273-year-old Stradivarius violin taken from a New York City apartment.

Neither investigators nor Harvard officials will say much about the investigation’s progress or how the works were stolen. Major works of art have been stolen before—a man took roughly 3,000 rare books and maps from the Widener Library and the Fine Arts Library in the Fogg Art Museum in 1996. The documents were worth $1.1 million.

A former mental patient who worked as a shelver at Widener Library from 1989 to 1994 stole about 400 books.

Both men were later caught and the university recovered much of what was taken.

The main issue now for Harvard is developing sufficient security procedures that don’t do damage to the central purpose of a major research library: allowing people to mine the vast stacks on their own.

The works cover a variety of arcane subjects in the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Quing periods of Chinese history—from the years 960 to 1911.

Without them, Cline said, there’s a glaring omission in the Harvard-Yenching Library’s book collection.

“When books like this are taken, the break in the collection has a far-reaching impact on scholarship,” Cline said. “Its effect is worldwide.”