Colleges targeting book crooks

USA Today reports:

Colleges and universities are intensifying efforts to reduce the growing problem of textbook thefts by marking books with invisible ink, requiring used bookstores to keep logs of sellers and banning the resale of the expensive volumes by non-students.

Many textbooks now cost well over $100 and are tempting targets for thieves who often can sell them for half the original price. The City Council in Madison, Wis., home to the University of Wisconsin, passed an ordinance this year requiring bookstores that buy used textbooks to keep detailed records on the sellers: physical descriptions and driver's license, Social Security or state ID numbers.

The ordinance, which took effect in July, was prompted by "a spike in the number of people who were selling the books to get money for drugs," campus police Detective Peter Grimyser says.

Sandi Torkildson, owner of A Room of One's Own, a bookstore four blocks from campus, objects to keeping the personal data for six months and sharing it with police at their request without search warrants. "It's an issue of readers' privacy," she says.

Most campus police don't keep statistics on textbook thefts, but James Howard, textbook manager at Oregon State University's campus bookstore, says thefts rise as prices increase. "We see a lot of stolen books," he says. "It's easy cash."

Social Security numbers for selling text books.