Students warned of library theft

A STUDENT’S LAPTOP was stolen over the Easter break from Palace Green Library when she left her desk for just five minutes.

Madeleine St-Amour, a second year from Trevelyan College, was working in Palace Green Library on Saturday 25th April when she noticed her white Macbook had disappeared.

She said: “I was at Palace Green all day at a desk on my own, and it must have gone whilst I went to the toilet. I only left my desk for five minutes at most about twice that afternoon. It was in its case and hidden under my bags, so I only noticed it had gone at about four o’clock. When I realised it had definitely gone, after I’d searched everywhere, I burst into tears and told the Palace Green people”.

However, since the library has minimal security facilities, there was little staff could do to help.

Madeleine went on to say: “They said because there was no CCTV, and people walk in and out of the library all day, they couldn’t really help me too much – but they did help me look around the library for it”.

Unlike the Main Library, Palace Green welcomes members of the public to its Archives and Special Collections and so lacks a card entry system. >>>Responsibility for belongings rests solely with the students who own them.

“We do our best to ensure people look after their possessions – and we provide lockers,” a library source said. “But people just say, ‘Oh, it’s safe in here’. We can’t have a card entry system because of our archives”.

Madeleine said: “I wasn’t actually aware that it was a public library. I hadn’t heard from anyone that anything had got stolen before so I was kind of lulled into a false sense of security by the Durham bubble. They should have some way to monitor what goes on because it could easily happen again.”

She has learnt from her experience: “I’m much more vigilant, and I’d say back everything up on a hard drive,” she said. “I had my work backed up but because I DJ, I had about 8,000 songs that weren’t. I’ve had my iTunes since I was about fifteen so it was a bit of a loss”.