Re: Video Thefts

David Kirk (dkirk@cats.ucsc.edu)
Thu, 31 Oct 1996 20:39:04 -0800

We had an experience of missing laserdiscs - five popular titles were
stolen from the collection which we never recovered but we eventually
caught one of our workstudy students (the one we suspected in the first
place) "borrowing" titles to take home and view on his own laserdisc player
and then returning the following day. He "thought" it was OK but it is
against library and university policy so we called campus police and
arrested him as well as dismissing him. Eventually we dropped the charges
but the incident went on his student college record. It certainly put the
"fear" into all the other employees.

We caught our student by doing a total shelf-reading of the laserdisc
collection each morning before we opened, noting the missing titles and
checking them against faculty checkouts. When the missing titles suddenly
reappeared later in the day we knew it had to be one of our students and
thru a process of elimination knew who was on duty at the time the missing
items reappeared.

All of our items are 3-M stripped and supposedly trigger the alarm system
at the exit gate.

Dave Kirk - Media Specialist & Film/Video Selector
104 McHenry Library, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Voice: (408) 459-2324 Fax: (408) 459-8206
email: dkirk@cats.ucsc.edu URL: http://media.ucsc.edu