"Walter Traprock" wrote in message
...
"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote:

wrote:

What is the difference between removing library stamp and
proof of ownership ?

Alice is saying that maybe the the book had been stolen from the library
and the library stamp was removed to hide that fact.

If part of the title page has been cut out, I don't see how you can know
what may once have been on that section (unless it was printed text).
Are you just guessing that it may have been a library stamp? If so, it's
a reasonable guess, but surely it is just as likely to have been a
signature by a previous owner?

But perhaps you have more to go on and can identify the actual library
(perhaps because there are other stamps elsewhere in the book)? If so,
then it might be worth contacting the library to see whether the book
has indeed been properly deaccessioned.

Gee, should we be doing that with all our books? What about books
bought at a library sale? The library itself may not have concretely
established ownership, so this gets difficult.

Many, if not most, books bought at library sales were donated to the library
and never entered into the collection at all. When books that have been part
of a collection are deaccessioned, they are generally stamped "Withdrawn" in
some prominent place, like the title page, or the top or bottom page edges.
Admittedly, someone could easily fake such a stamp, but I wouldn't suggest
that every collector running across a book stamped "Withdrawn" follow up.

On the other hand, the book in question appears to be of some value, and the
original poster did say that a piece of the title page was cut out to remove
a library stamp (although he may have been guessing as to what was removed).
Since missing material is generally considered worse than defaced material,
it's unlikely that any knowledgeable person would actually remove a piece of
a page unless they wanted to conceal former ownership. In fact, former
ownership for a book of this age would generally be considered a valuable
piece of provenance.

So, one has to ask oneself...why the removal? The first thing that springs
to my mind is that the book was stolen from a library collection, and the
information was removed so that the true owner could not be identified.
There might be other reasons, but that's the first thing I thought of. If
that were the case, it might even be possible to identify the library, since
there are probably a limited number that list the book in their holdings. I
don't collect them myself, but it seems to me that 400 year old books can't
be that thick on the ground. One could conceivable write to libraries based
on their WorldCat entries.

But that's not advice for every book that comes one's way. It's only that
this one has been defaced in an odd way that sends up a red flag for me, at
least.

Alice