
The Anatomy of a Crime Discovery After 25 Years: A Case of Book Theft (2007) - tokai
https://www.liberquarterly.eu/articles/10.18352/lq.7874/
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JoeAltmaier
There's a real need to be able to 'fingerprint' a rare book, either through
photographs of identifying pages (which could be removed or defaced rendering
it useless), or even an x-ray of the book.

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PhantomGremlin
Maybe just do something destructive. Just take a Sharpie permanent marker and
write "ROYAL LIBRARY" on the bottom plane of the book pages.

Granted, that's a flippant proposal. And it wouldn't work on certain books,
where the edges of the pages are gilded. (I wonder if many/most books from
those days had gilded edges?)

The Sharpie is just one idea. I'm sure there are much more clever, simple,
obvious permanent methods that could be used in appropriate circumstances. The
main point is to permanently and clearly mark the entire book.

Yes I know this would destroy the "value" of the book in many people's eyes.
But I'd like to ask the Royal Library this question:

    
    
       Would you rather have in your possession the Louvain 
       edition of Thomas More's Utopia, with "ROYAL LIBRARY"
       written in Sharpie on the bottom, or would you rather
       that the book had been sold at Christie's for 140,000
       GBP, and you have nothing?
    

I know which I would choose. But I'm not an art historian.

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JoeAltmaier
Maybe an ultraviolet sharpie? That could be practical.

