A inquiry made under Britain’s new Freedom of Information Act has revelead that “More than 8,000 items ranging from 16th century maps to copies of the Beano have gone missing from the British Library since it moved to new premises,” says a Daily Telegraph report by Marco Giannangeli. Officials say “Some disappearances were thefts, with collectors using razors to cut rare maps out of books. But the biggest theft is believed to have been carried out by a contractor who stole £17,000 worth of comics from a storage area.” But just as disturbing were the items that were simply missing—as Giannangeli notes, “Aside from thefts, more than 7,900 books and documents have simply gone missing from the library’s 128,000 acres of bookshelves. The oldest of these is a collection by the Roman poet Horace printed in 1540.” Nonetheless, says the report, “Library managers insisted yesterday that security was still tight at the £511 million premises in central London.”