From the Lubbock (Texas) Avalanche-Journal
Story last updated at 7:03 a.m. Sunday, September 17, 2006
Tech library theft marks new chapter
Unprecedented scheme called stunning betrayal
BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
Nineteen red letters spelled trouble for Johnathan Nunley.
He did his best to hide them, officials said - smothering the name
"Texas Tech University" in black ink before shipping the books that
the letters marked. But the books' discovery unraveled a profitable
side business police believe the 22-year-old student assistant had
run for months.
Nunley was indicted in August on a third-degree felony theft charge
after more than $75,000 worth of Texas Tech University Library books
found their way to an online retailer. The charge can carry up to 10
years in prison. An indictment is not a finding of guilt but
indicates that enough evidence exists to hold a trial.
Between March 30 and July 31, police believe Nunley sent or arranged
to send more than 1,000 books to an Oregon-based online book buyer
specializing in textbooks and nonfiction. Nunley could not be reached
for comment. His attorney declined to comment for this article,
explaining that the case was pending.
The theft was simple, and one the thief apparently believed could go
on for some time. But the embezzlement was unprecedented for
university libraries, prompting a change of Tech policies, and a
stunning betrayal of trust, according to librarians across the
country. "I mean, really, it's almost the worst thing that anybody
could do," said Susan Hildreth, president of the Public Library
Association and state librarian of California.
Nunley started small, according to business records and court
documents. The Tech student was close to 100 credit hours in January
when he started working at the library. He made minimum wage as a
student assistant in the facility's circulation department, scanning
books into the system when they left the library and returning them
to racks as they came back.
Only full-time employees handle the roughly 40,000 to 50,000
unmarked, brand-new books that the library adds annually. But as a
circulation desk employee, Nunley could get the books in near mint
condition, bearing only red stamps identifying them as the property
of Tech and a library call number marked in the book's first few
pages.
His late-night shift gave him opportunity and little supervision. In
late March, a person using Nunley's name, home address and an online
payment system linked to a bank account offered five slightly used
books to the online bookbuyer McKenzie Books. The account grew to be
one of the business's top 30 high-volume sellers, McKenzie Books
owner Jim Smith said. "Some people actually do this for a living,"
Smith said.
But the seller had some odd habits, he said. Customers who bought
books sold by the Nunley account in June complained that pages,
including the table of contents, were missing from the textbooks. The
seller didn't respond to e-mails, and a phone number listed for the
account was disconnected. "At that point, we didn't know what was
going on, why we were getting these books with the first page of the
table of contents cut out," Smith said. "We later kind of put
everything together."
Around early July, Smith had a call from a Mercedes-Benz dealership,
asking about his "employee" Johnathan Nunley. Nunley was putting a
down payment on a 2002 Mercedes C320. "I kind of had to set that
straight," Smith said.
But the book dealer didn't believe there was anything too unusual
about the seller. Smith receives plenty of like-new to new books from
sellers. When Smith stopped paying for books missing their table of
contents, the seller changed ways. It was not until after a part-time
book sorter noticed that they could read "Texas Tech University"
under a strip of permanent marker and the library confirmed the books
were missing that Smith was convinced there was something wrong.
It was the first time, to his knowledge, someone had sold him
purloined books from a library. "It was unfortunate," Smith said. "We
had just paid him a large amount of money. And then two days later,
we hear that these books are stolen."
Smith believes his 10-man operation, based out of a 4,000-square-foot
warehouse in Beaverton, Ore., is one of the older online book-buying
businesses. Sellers visit a McKenzie Books Web site, cash4books.net,
where they enter a number unique to the title stamped on the back of
almost all books. The Web site quotes an offer and prepares a
shipping label. The company pays for the seller to ship books to the
warehouse, checks the condition of their wares and processes payment
for the books.
Smith sells the books his company buys through his Web site, or
through other retailers like Amazon.com and Half.com. U.S. used-book
retailers did $2.2 billion in business in 2004, according to data
compiled by the Book Industry Study Group. McKenzie Books receives
roughly 750 books a day from throughout the country - mostly from
students, but also college professors, bookstores and scouts.
Nunley's account set up more than 70 such sales, and had shipped 54,
according to police documents. The seller received more than $15,000
for the books, and another $1,300 in shipping costs - little more
than 20 percent of what the library estimates the books were worth.
Such a theft was akin to abusing access to the personal records of
library customers, said Hildreth, the California state librarian and
library association president. Professional librarians, especially at
smaller or midsize libraries, consider their maintenance of publicly
funded access to knowledge sacred, she said. "Those are like the two
things, the two holy grails of the library world," Hildreth said.
Mary Ellen Davis, executive director of the Association of College
and Research Libraries, and an assistant executive director were
baffled by the description of the crime, and said they had never
heard of such a thing happening at another member university. "It
sounds like a sort of unique set of circumstances," Davis said.
But while there have been surveys and research to show that libraries
anticipate about 1 to 2 percent of their collection to vanish, thanks
to malicious or forgetful patrons, there was very little study of
what kind of losses should be attributed to employees, Hildreth said.
She doubted it was a significant problem, but believed it occurs more
than some would like to acknowledge. "I think it's been like an
elephant in the room," Hildreth said. "You're in an environment where
all you care about is trust. I think the concept is - it's very
difficult for people to accept."
Tech is not losing 1 percent of its collection - the equivalent of
25,000 books - but was not tracking such losses due to the expense of
inventorying 2.5 million books, university dean of libraries Donald
Dyal said. For the university to discover the theft, a library patron
would have had to have requested one of the books that were sold.
Nunley was not a librarian. He was one of the nearly 200 student
employees on whom university libraries depend heavily, especially at
an around-the-clock facility like Tech's.
Tech library spokesman Jeff Whitley wrote in an e-mail response to
questions that the library did not even believe Nunley was a
legitimate student, though university records show Nunley had
completed more than 100 credit hours at the time of his arrest. He
was someone who found the library a lucrative target, Whitley wrote.
"Unfortunately, we believe this is not a Texas Tech student who
committed a crime, but someone with a criminal record who posed as a
(Tech) student [in] order to steal," he wrote.
The Avalanche-Journal could not confirm that Nunley had a criminal record.
Tech planned to change its student employee policy, Whitley said.
Employees would have to be "serious" students, and would work under
additional supervisors, Dyal said. The library was also looking into
a digital video surveillance system for the circulation department or
other areas. Unusual as the theft was, the library does not believe
it could completely end such activity, now that it had been
discovered. "The only way to insure zero loss would be to close the
library," Dyal wrote in an e-mail response. "(Kind of) defeats the
mission."