Upstate public library one of few to house rare book collection; Spectrum News 1, July 7, 2026

 VIKTORIA HALLIKAAR , Spectrum News 1; Upstate public library one of few to house rare book collection

"The resources you can find at public libraries seem to be ever-growing. One collection is keeping an eye on the future by preserving the past.

Deep in the stacks of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library is a massive collection of books.

“We're contemporary. We're of the moment,” explained Heather Gring, the rare book curator for Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.

But these books aren’t your standard page-turners.

“The oldest thing in our collection is 4,000 years old, and the most contemporary is local press that has been made this year,” said Gring.

Spectrum News 1 was given a rare look inside the rare book vaults.

“The difference between an old book and a rare book is who wants to buy it,” Gring explained.

Cameras, locks and key codes are trying to not repeat the mistakes of the past.

“This collection is worth, collectively, millions of dollars,” said Gring. "The way the Rare Books department was even started was because of a theft in the 1930s. [...] They worked with the FBI, and they did successfully retrieve almost all of the books that had been stolen.”

Keeping these treasures safe doesn’t mean keeping them hidden. This is one of only about 25 rare book departments in the country to be housed in a public library."

Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists; The New York Times, June 12, 2026

 Ephrat Livni, The New York Times ; ‘Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists

One by one, valuable works by Russian masters like Pushkin and Gogol were disappearing from libraries across Europe. Now six defendants are being prosecuted.

"The latest chapter in the saga of an international book heist that stripped prominent libraries across Europe of more than 170 rare Russian literary works is being written in a Paris courtroom this week.

Alexander Pushkin, the 19th-century poet and novelist considered the father of modern Russian literature, is a main character. Most of the thefts targeted his works — worth nearly $3 million in total — from libraries in the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland.

The other characters have a less literary pedigree. They are six Georgian defendants standing trial, most unnamed by the French authorities, on accusations of conspiracy and theft...

The crimes stunned librarians, bibliophiles and prosecutors alike because of their scale, the prominence of the libraries targeted and the near-singular focus of the suspects. The investigation became known as “Operation Pushkin.”

The thieves used different background stories, giving various reasons for their interest in rare Russian books, according to a law enforcement arm of the European Union, the Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation. They often worked in pairs, with one distracting librarians while the other replaced the original work with a copy, usually after multiple visits."