Rare Books Back Home at Claremont Colleges : Literature: Some of the 900 volumes stolen in 1986 and 1987 by Stephen C. Blumberg are now being displayed at Honnold Library.

The eight exhibit cases in Claremont Colleges’ Honnold Library are brimming with books that weave magical tales of colorful explorations and wild adventures.

On the outside, the worn, cloth-covered volumes may look tame in comparison to the stories inside them. But the books have recently been through an adventure of their own.

They are a sampling of about 900 rare titles stolen from the Claremont libraries in 1986 and 1987 by book thief Stephen C. Blumberg. Blumberg, now in prison, stole 21,000 volumes from more than 300 libraries across the country over a 20-year period.

The title of the Honnold exhibit, “The Return of the Innocents Abroad,” reveals the feelings of special collections librarian Susan M. Allen about the recovered volumes.

“After the amount of time I spent on this case, I began to think of them (the books) as family,” she said with a chuckle. Getting the books back has been “like welcoming a long-lost relative home.”

The books were found when the FBI raided Blumberg’s Ottumwa, Iowa, home in March, 1990. Crammed into every room, including the bathroom, of Blumberg’s 17-room, three-story house, the books had been shelved and organized by category.

Additional volumes were found in a rental storage facility nearby. Authorities believe that most of the stolen books were recovered because Blumberg, who lived on income from a family estate, had no interest in selling them.

“The sorting and identification of the stolen volumes has been a nightmare for the authorities,” Allen said. She traveled to Iowa several times, both to testify at Blumberg’s trial and to retrieve the books stolen from Honnold’s Special Collections section.

A nonprofit group based in Dublin, Ohio, the Online Computer Library Center, has set up a database to catalogue the books that Blumberg stole and to assist in returning them to their home libraries.

Federal authorities took Blumberg to a law enforcement warehouse where the confiscated books were being housed in order for him to try to identify which libraries the books were stolen from.

“He was somewhat helpful, but he often had a better memory about 50-cent items he had gotten from garage sales than he did about rare books he had stolen,” Allen said.

So far, Allen has brought back more than 700 titles from Blumberg’s booty, and she expects more to be returned over the next few months. The value of the books stolen from Honnold is more than $500,000, Allen said.

The display contains works by Charles Dickens, Robert Burns, William Blake and Sir Francis Drake that were published during their lifetimes. Included is a bound copy of the California state constitution from about 1848 and several handwritten manuscripts detailing the voyages and journeys of some of the West’s great explorers.

Among the most valuable books stolen was the “Nuremberg Chronicle,” published in 1493, one of the last histories of the world that does not mention Christopher Columbus. Two facsimiles of the illustrated history are in the exhibit.

Blumberg, who was convicted in April, 1991, was sentenced last summer to serve nearly six years in federal prison and pay $200,000 in fines.

At Honnold, Blumberg’s break-ins occurred over a period of months and were not immediately detected by security systems or librarians, Allen said. The thefts were finally discovered when the curator of the library’s Western Americana collection brought visitors in to show them an oversized, late-16th Century volume, “Principal Navigations” by Richard Hakluyt. But the curator could not find it and realized it was too large to have been misplaced, Allen said.

Searches over the next few weeks turned up about 40 important books that were missing, Allen said. But an inventory of the entire special collections department took a year to complete. She theorizes that Blumberg used the library’s book carts to take a total of more than 900 volumes.

Blumberg was living in an apartment in Pasadena during the winter of 1986 and spring of 1987, and he is believed to have carried out his thefts during that time, when the library was closed for the evening.

“He was an expert burglar and locksmith. He prided himself on being very careful and also very neat and tidy. He cleaned up any mess that would have alerted staff members,” Allen said.

Blumberg was able to pick locks, steal keys, thwart electronic security systems and blend in with crowds. One associate described the 130-pound, 5-foot-9 man as “Spider-Man” because of his proficiency at scaling rooftops and dumbwaiters.

The ease with which Blumberg gained entry to some of America’s greatest libraries, including those on the campuses of USC and Harvard, has raised concerns among librarians about how their treasures are guarded. His thefts have led increased security measures at libraries across the country.

The ease with which Blumberg gained access to many libraries throughout the country has raised concerns among librarians about how their treasures are guarded. His thefts have led to increased security measures.

Allen said that libraries nationwide have begun cooperating since the Blumberg case.

“We’ve certainly learned that greater vigilance is necessary in libraries,” she said.

Bonnie J. Clemens, director of the Claremont libraries, said additional security measures were installed after Blumberg’s thefts were discovered.

“We’ve installed some systems that can be called high-tech, but more importantly, we have strengthened our management procedures to provide for increased vigilance, tighter inventory control and greater employee awareness through expanded training programs,” she said.

The exhibit featuring the returned books will be at Honnold Library’s special collections section through Friday. Library hours are 8 a.m. to midnight Mondays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. to midnight Sundays.