KEY POINTS:
When Turnbull Library scholar and bibliographer Austin Graham Bagnall died in 1986, he bequeathed his personal 7000-book library to Massey University.
The Palmerston North institution subsequently built up the library, which now forms an integral part of its New Zealand-Pacific Collection.
As librarian in charge, Karen Churton was responsible for keeping the works and, with a budget of $70,000, had the authority to buy new titles.
No one suspected that while building the collection, Churton was also stealing from it.
The 48-year-old mother of three - who Massey head librarian John Redmayne describes as a "sensible and pragmatic" librarian - had always been a model worker.
She began at the Palmerston North campus in 1991 as a library assistant in the New Zealand Pacific section.
By 1998 she was a library technician, and in 2001 became the New Zealand Pacific librarian.
Churton had access to rare and valuable books, and had authority to delete book records when necessary.
And for 10 days in July last year she was deleting titles furiously.
She went into a panic after being contacted at home by Christchurch police around July 10.
A team of officers had been working Operation Pukapuka (Maori for books) - an inquiry into a national book theft racket that had stolen more than $1 million worth of library books over the past decade.
Though Churton had no involvement with the gang, investigators stumbled across her after she inadvertently sold a book to one of the book ring members.
She denied any knowledge to police, but from July 12 to 20 began deleting titles from library databases in an attempt to cover her tracks. Those titles she didn't delete herself, she ordered others to erase. There might be one deletion a year in a rare book collection, never the 19 Churton carried out or ordered last July.
Police later approached Massey claiming to be holding books stolen from its collections, but thanks to Churton computer records showed it never held the titles.
"We believed the computer doesn't lie, so told the police they weren't ours," Mr Redmayne says.
It was not until he was home for lunch one day, and reading a hard-copy book list, that he realised the police might have been right.
"I took a big gasp really ... it was paper that saved the day."
Churton was arrested and charged in February. She made a confession to stealing six books in the 12 months from March 2002, for a combined value of $23,310. At least one of the books had been stolen from the Rare Books cabinet outside Mr Redmayne's office.
She had sold the titles to Otaki-based auction house Bethune's Rare Books: three on August 19, 2002, for $1910, one on November 28 that year for $5400 and two on March 6 the following year for $16,000.
Police have subsequently recovered two books: The Art Album of New Zealand Flora and The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage.
A seventh title, Maori Art - which fetched $1800 at auction - is believed to be a Massey book, too. Churton, however, claimed the book belonged to her grandmother. Massey couldn't prove otherwise.
But the university's losses did not stop there. Up to 24 books, totalling about $40,000, appear to have been removed, but library bosses can't prove it was Churton.
Churton appeared in the Palmerston North District Court this week for sentence on one representative theft charge. She was jailed for 11 months, a term her lawyer Phil Drummond described as "manifestly excessive" and immediately appealed.
Churton's actions have triggered a security rethink at the university. Rare books may have to have security tags similar to those in clothing stores.
It will be an expensive process, but one that is worth doing, Mr Redmayne says. "It's quite a ... collection, and it had some treasures. There's still some treasures there, thank goodness."
Stolen books
Prices realised at auction:
* A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific, performed in the years 1796, 1797, 1798 in the ship Duff commanded by Captain James Wilson. Anon, $1000.
* The Art Album of New Zealand Flora, Mr & Mrs Edward H. Featon, $800 (recovered).
* The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of HM Discovery ships Erebus and Terror (Vol 1: Flora Antarctica), in the years 1839-1843, Joseph Hooker, $9000.
* The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of HM Discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839 to 1843 (Part II: Flora Novae Zelandiae), $5400.
* The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of HM Discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839-1843 (Part III: Flora Tasmania), $7000 (recovered).
* An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entomology: Being the study of our Native Insects, G.V. Hudson, $110.
Total: $23,310.
