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Re: Gathering policies re: Theft in Reading Rooms



Members of the SAA Security Roundtable are working with Rachel Howarth
of the RBMS Security Committee in gathering policies relating to
thefts in reading rooms.  We would appreciate a response to the
following request from Rachel Howarth, who will share the work of her
committee with our SAA Roundtable.  The results will be discussed at
the Security Roundtable meeting at SAA in Denver on August 31.  Thank
you for helping with this effort.


Hello,

I am, once more, requesting information about theft in Reading Rooms
on
behalf of the RBMS Security Committee and the Public Services
Discussion
Group.  I am particularly interested in the steps for public services
staff
to follow if they observe a theft in process:  call the police? call
campus
security? press a panic button?  have the suspect photographed by a
surveillance camera?

The RBMS Theft guidelines offer general suggestions about this, but
the
group(s) felt that a compilation of various specific policies would
be
useful for librarians/archivists who have not yet developed their
own
step-by step policies, and for Security Committee members working on
the
revision of the existing Theft Guidelines.

I would very much appreciate your mailing or emailing me at the
address
below if you have:

1) documented policies covering what public service staff is to do if
they
observe, or suspect, a theft in progress in the Reading Room;

2) informal policies about this that you are willing to share;

3) a desire for more information about these kinds of policies.

(Response to this last will give me a sense of the demand, beyond my
committees, for this kind of information to be made generally
available)

I will compile the answers that I receive for discussion at the ALA
annual
meeting in Chicago.  If you would like to contribute to this effort,
but
prefer that your institution's name not be specifically mentioned in
my
discussion, please know that I will respect your wishes.

If you have questions about this project, please don't hesitate to
contact me.

Many thanks,

Rachel Howarth
rjh@mail.utexas.edu
Head of the Reading Room
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
The University of Texas at Austin
P.O. Box 7219  Austin, TX  78713-7219
Phone: (512) 471-9119  Fax: (512) 471-2899

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