• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.273-295
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• 2010

Germany has started restitution process for most of collections from its occupied countries after World War II which was strongly led by the United Nations. However, this process did not include many of the plundered Jewish collections. In 1989, restitution for the Jewish's properties confiscated by the Nazis became important international issue with success in Jewish material claims against Germany in the U.S and Europe countries after German unification. German libraries has still possessed collections sequestered by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. With Washington conference on holocaust-era assets in 1998, libraries began to sympathize with restoration of their Jewish confiscated collections. In present, by identifying the provenance of those collections at primary level, German librarians focus on various restitution activities for those collections in order to introspect and overcome their past. Specifically, the libraries publish the practical guidebook of studies on the provenance identification and open the database for the pillaged collections to the public. Few libraries start to restore the collections, but the numbers of the restituted collections are still insignificant.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.233-259
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• 2005

The loss of book happens not only from natural disaster but from mostly humans improper intention to acquire without proper consideration of ethnic standards. We occasionally have difficulty in differentiating between stealing and toying books since it is often called the basic instinct to possess the books. It is however absolutely illegal to take books belong to others without permission due to one's pure love towards books, passion to possession, or innate instinct. In this study, we define the definition of book theft and classify the cases of historically well-known book theft. It then states the book plunder cases of Nazi with the abuse of public powers, Libri, and Blumberg in terms of quantity and methods as a history of library.