Did the thief get anything else, or was the laptop enough?

totally been there with my dog's ears, same exact ghosting thing. it's definitely night mode being slow, it stacks frames and if anything moves even a tiny bit you get that blurry trail. just tap to lock focus on his face and bump the exposure down before you snap, or switch to burst mode and pick the sharpest one.

Gotta disagree with you there. Most librarians I've dealt with already check WorldCat before they even place a request, so asking them to do it feels like telling a chef to preheat the oven. The 6 week wait probably means the book was rare or the lending library dragged their feet, not that your librarian was sleeping on the job. I've had ILLs come in super fast with zero nudging, and others take forever no matter what I do. Maybe you got lucky with a librarian who had time to dig deeper, but I wouldn't call that a trick, just a bit of timing.