Preventing Patron Theft in the Archives: Legal Perspectives and Problems

The theft of archival materials has become a problem of yet-unknown proportions. No one knows how much material has been stolen from archival repositories over the years. There are two types of theft that archives face: insider theft and patron theft. This paper concentrates on patron theft and describes a survey to determine security awareness among member repositories in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin's Area Research Center (ARC) Network.