Word: shea
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...always well-known for finding books; I would pray and the Lord would answer my prayers and I would have the book," says John Shea, superintendent of the stacks in Widener. He is the one person responsible for finding any missing book in Widener's three and one-half million volume collection. "A Yale professor once told me that their library was good, very good, but it will never be tops because it doesn't have a John Shea," he relates...
...John Shea--the man who nabbed the library's biggest book thief--doesn't depend on prayer to uncover missing or stolen books. As a matter of fact, he relies mainly on his 46 years of experience working in University libraries. He started in the old Gore Library as a coat checker, moved into the newly-built Widener as a book checker, became shortly thereafter Superintendent of the stacks in Widener, and in 1948 was appointed an officer of the University with the title of "The Superintendent of the Stack and the Harry Elkins Memorial Building of the Harvard College...
After receiving a slip of paper bearing the urgent "N.O.S." (Not on Shelf) signal, Shea immediately hurries to the shelf where the book is supposed to be, and many times he finds it misplaced or pushed behind other volumes. If the book is not there, he goes to the catalogue file and learns if the would-be borrower has copied the correct call number. This solves the majority of the cases...
...other books will be found in the private stalls within the stacks. Instead of trying to examine all 300 cubicles, he acquaints himself with the research projects certain students are engaged in, and, using this knowledge as a lead, investigates these stalls. Out of 60 missing books a day, Shea manages to recover...
...have few people who try to gyp books from the library," Shea notes. "I remember, however, one year in 1928 when we had 2500 books stolen. A bookstore clerk came running into my office waving a tattered and beaten old book. He said some guy tried to sell it. I looked it up in the inventory and sure enough it had been stolen. I told the director, who informed the police, but the director said to me: 'John, I want you to work on this case yourself...