Rare Chinese Books Taken From Harvard

More than three dozen Chinese books--some more than 1,000 years old--and two scrolls worth more than $1 million are missing from Harvard-Yenching Library in Boston, which houses the largest collection of East Asian books outside Asia. A rare-book specialist at the Harvard University-owned library discovered in March that the books and scrolls had been taken from their protected perch in the rare-book room. When she learned of the theft, the FBI was alerted. Neither the museum nor law enforcement publicly acknowledged the theft or issued a statement. But the collection was registered this summer on an FBI Web site designed to alert potential buyers to purloined artworks.