£200,000 worth of books stolen from library authority

LITERARY larcenists stole 44,107 books from librarys in the Western Education and Library Board (WELB) area between 2005 and 2009 at a total cost of £194,347 to the taxpayer.
By The Newsroom
Published 17th Jun 2010, 13:30 BST

A further 2,769 items worth 16,033 were also borrowed from libraries in the WELB area and not returned during the same period.

In 2006/7 WELB incurred the greatest losses with 12,704 books and 4,971 other items stolen at a cost of 60,438.

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A breakdown of the figures by district was not available for last year due to the new Libraries Northern Ireland authority taking over responsibility from the regional library boards.

But Libraries NI lost 52,759 books and 2,700 other items at a total cost of 159,796 in 2009/10.

Culture, Arts and Leisure Minister Nelson McCausland outlined the figures in response to a query tabled at the Stormont Assembly.

He noted that the analysis obtained from the five Education and Library Boards was incomplete in that historically the different Boards analysed their figures in different ways.

He also advised the Education and Library Boards did not carry out annual stocktaking exercises to identify books that may have been stolen without first being borrowed.

Related topics:Libraries