[rohrpost] Richard Ovenden: Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge

[Karl Dietz]

Richard Ovenden’s new book, “Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate
Destruction of Knowledge ... mehr
<http://groups.google.com/group/aki20/msg/17bc18cfad8f7?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email>


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On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 4:56 PM Karl Dietz <karl.dz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Richard Ovenden’s new book, “Burning the Books: A History of the
> Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge
> <https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Books-Deliberate-Destruction-Knowledge/dp/0674241207?ots=1&tag=thneyo0f-20&linkCode=w50>,”
> is a litany of this sort of tragedy. “The preservation of information
> continues to be a key tool in the defense of open societies,” Ovenden, who
> runs the Bodleian Libraries, at Oxford, writes. unesco’s report “Lost
> Memory
> <http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/lost-memory-libraries-and-archives-destroyed-in-the-twentieth-century/#:~:text=Lost%20memory%3A%20libraries%20and%20archives%20destroyed%20in%20the%20twentieth%20century,-The%20present%20document&text=van%20der%20Hoeven%2C%20is%20an,archives%2C%20whether%20written%20or%20audiovisual.>”
> is an inventory of inventories: a list of libraries and archives that were
> destroyed in the twentieth century, including the widespread devastations
> of the First and Second World Wars, the burning of some of the collections
> in the National Library in Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge, and the
> destruction of the National and University Library in Sarajevo, by the
> Bosnian Serb Army, in 1992. Libraries house books: copies. Archives store
> documents: originals. Archives cannot be replaced. As unesco’s report
> puts it, “The loss of archives is as serious as the loss of memory in a
> human being.”
>
>