Robert Lopresti to Present 'To Catch a Map Thief' Feb. 27

Retired WWU librarian Robert Lopresti will give a talk called “To Catch a Map Thief” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb.27  at Western Washington University in the Map Collection, located in Wilson Library Room 290.

This event is free and open to the public.

In 2006, there was a major map theft at Western Washington University.  Lopresti will talk about the two-year investigation by Western Libraries personnel that eventually drew in the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and Montana State government, resulting in the conviction of a man who had stolen publications from more than 100 libraries around the country.

Lopresti retired from Western in 2018 after 31 years as a librarian, including eight years as map librarian.  He is an award-winning author of several scholarly articles, two novels, and more than sixty mystery and fantasy stories. Lopresti’s short stories have been finalists for the Derringer Award five times, winning three times.  He has also won the Black Orchid Novella Award, and has been reprinted in Best American Mystery Stories and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror.

Lopresti’s recent work of nonfiction, "When Women Didn’t Count, the Chronic Mismeasure and Marginalization of American Women in Federal Statistics," is the result of four decades of work with government publications, and won the Lane/Virginia F. Saunders Memorial Research Award in 2018.

This talk is offered as part of the Western Libraries Speaking of Maps lectures, designed to highlight the use and value of maps in research, in teaching and learning, and in daily life.

For more information about this event, please contact Dennis Matthews, Dennis.Matthews@wwu.edu, 360-650-3272.