The real truth about Peter Nash

[david_l]

Originally Posted by Leon

David, From what I have been told by reliable sources I believe the NYPL committed gross negligence many (20?) years ago in not trying to get their stuff back while it was being sold at auction or a lot of this could have been prevented. When they chose to look the other way, to me, it made the future issues their own and not anyone else's. I should add, otherwise I agree with you, when things can be proven they were stolen they should be returned.

Leon, I respect you as a person and it's obvious you're a smart and caring guy. I also appreciate you directly responding to me even though I'm sure this is a subject you're sick of reading about on the forum. I have a fundamental difference of opinion on this though. The following post is not about you or your experiences but rather just my opinion on the subject and some posts I've seen here.

IHHO..

A lazy employee or understaffing does not constitute negligence. More importantly, the NYPL collection is a public collection. No matter how long anybody filibusters or how many times an item is sold, an item removed from the NYPL will never actually belong to anyone but the public. You can possess this property, sell or trade it, but in the end you will always just be possessing stolen poperty at the expense of the greater public and the community you spend so much time participating in. If history, knowledge, and community is important to us we should be enthusiastically returning these items to the public and we should be praising those that do. I'm not trying to villainize anyone. We all love this hobby and sports history but anybody possessing items from a public archive is explicitly hurting the community, both present and future.

It is true that many items in an archive are uncatalogued and may never be viewed by researchers. It's true that some archive employees may potentially be lazy or self serving. These are merely hollow justifications though. You never know what a researcher may find important in fifty years. Or what one item can tell us about another. A small theft can turn out to be quite a significant loss to future researchers. I could go on and on about this but I think everyone gets my point.

This argument of ownership doesn't even get into the potential legal and financial risk of owning such materials. A quick web search will show countless other collectors who have gotten burned for owning items taken from archives, libraries, and other public and private collections.

I won't be posting anymore on subjects although I will continue to read (how can I stop?).

I understand that others may have differing opinions but I believe our overall goals are the same.

Wishing everyone the best and their collecting endevours,

David Lu$t1g

(Edited last name for web searching purposes. Thanks).