OU Police Department officers Thursday arrested a man suspected of cutting pictures of young boys from books in Alden Library and 21 other libraries.

William A. Cracraft Jr., 34, of Nitro, W. Va., was arrested Thursday night in Alden Library after a student library employee observed a man cutting pictures from books on the library's first floor in the Southeast Asia collection. The employee informed a library staff member who detained Cracraft until the OUPD arrived.

Cracraft was charged with a fourth-degree felony count of vandalism and was arraigned Friday morning in Athens County Municipal Court. He is being held in the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail in Nelsonville on a $15,000 bond.

Cracraft was found with book pictures and pages stuffed in his pockets and shoes and a razor blade in his pocket, said OUPD Lt. Steve Noftz, who is investigating the incident.

Earlier Thursday, library employees found damaged books in the Fine Arts collection, said Gary Hunt, associate dean of Alden Library.

Cracraft is suspected to have vandalized at least 68 books found this week and more than $6,500 worth of books at Alden since 1995. OU will seek restitution for the damages, Noftz said.

Cracraft, who has cooperated with police, linked himself to vandalisms at 21 other libraries in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, he said.

Libraries at the University of Akron and Ohio State, Bowling Green, Kent State and Youngstown State universities have reported similar vandalism, many involved the same books vandalized at Atlden.

In September 1997, Alden Library employees found a large stack of books from which photographs of young boys had been removed with a razor. Similar types of vandalisms to books in the Fine Arts, Southeast Asia and children's collections had been reported since summer 1995, Hunt said in the Sept. 22, 1997 edition of The Post. The pictures involved both nude and clothed adolescent and pre-teen boys, he said.

When Alden Library borrowed the same books from other libraries to replace photographs in the vandalized books, employees noticed the same pictures had been removed from those books. Hunt then contacted officials at libraries across the state about the vandalisms.

OUPD has been notifying libraries about the arrest, according to a news release.