More maps missing from Boston library

BOSTON – Three dozen antique maps worth about $1 million are missing from the Boston Public Library, officials said, in addition to the 34 maps recovered during an investigation into a map dealer who confessed to stealing them.

Library officials released a detailed list of the missing documents to map dealers Wednesday, in case they show up on the market.

“We’ll shine the bright light and see if some of these things out there can find their way home,” Bernard Margolis, president of the Boston Public Library, told The Boston Globe.

The maps that are still missing were from books and atlases used by E. Forbes Smiley III, a rare-maps dealer with homes on Martha’s Vineyard and in Sebec, Maine.

In September, Smiley was sentenced in federal court in New Haven, Conn., to three years in prison for stealing nearly 100 rare maps worth about $3 million from libraries in five cities, including Boston, New York and London.

Smiley helped investigators recover many of the maps, stolen over eight years, including the 34 that will be returned to Boston Public Library. At the time, U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor said Smiley’s help led to the recovery of all but six maps and recommended a reduced sentence.

Other institutions, including Harvard and Yale universities and the New York Public Library, also have said they are missing more maps than were recovered during the Smiley investigation.

Of the maps stolen from the Boston Public Library, a 1613 rendering of New France by Samuel de Champlain is thought to be the most significant because of its rarity and age. The library’s curator, Ronald Grim, said there are likely just a handful of copies of the engraving.