Brent's points are well taken!!

It is the recovery for the public that should come first.

Perhaps I expressed a view based more on a philosophy that we must all honor
our public trust than a practical approach that seeks to recover the records
in a reasonable manner from holders who may well not be aware of the legal
ramifications.

Peter


-----Original Message-----
From: Brent Tarter [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 13 July 2001 6:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Lost Virginia Records


The report about the Prince William County documents is certainly
interesting, and every such recovery is good news.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has been gradually recovering estrayed records
(as they are termed) for more than a hundred years. While it is true, as
Peter Bergstrom has pointed out, that knowingly receiving or selling
estrayed public property may not be legal, it has always been in the
commonwealth's interest to try to recover the documents in a way that does
not drive other estrayed records deeper into hiding.

I am writing this without recourse to the legal documents, but I have done
some research on this topic, and this is how I understand the process has
usually worked.

The state government has often paid the holders of the documents the amount
of money that the holder had paid to obtain it with the understanding that
the payment is for the safe keeping and safe return of the records to proper
public possession. This does not reward the person who provides the records
to the commonwealth, but it recompenses those who are willing to surrender
them to their proper owner.

To threaten prosecution or replevy without compensation might seem like a
tempting procedure, considering that the person is in possession of records
that we might reasonably presume were once stolen, but that would certainly
make other holders of other records more reluctant to part with public
records in their possession. As the state librarian described the policy in
1928, the library's and the state's objectives were to recover the records
and the information they contain rather than "to drive such things to cover
and thus add to the improbability of their ever being heard of by the State
Library authorities."

Original thieves, of course, are excepted from this process.

See Sandra Gioia Treadway and Edward D. C. Campbell, Jr., eds., THE COMMON
WEALTH: TREASURES FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA (Richmond,
Va.: Library of Virginia, 1997), 19, 31-32.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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