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Destruction of Libraries and Archives
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  1. Archives under siege: Ottawa gathering calls for national action
    What We Have Lost, What We Stand to Lose: The Future of Archives and Archivists in Canada

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Report about a public meeting about the state of archives in Canada today.
  2. Armed gunmen raid salvadoran human rights organization, burn archives
    Sources News Release

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Armed gunmen raid Salvadoran human rights organization Pro-Busqueda just months after abrupt closure of Archdiocese's human rights office, Tutela Legal. Human rights defenders see actions as effort to destroy war crimes documentation in light of Supreme Court challenge to Amnesty Law.
  3. 'Badass Librarians' Foil al Qaeda, Save Ancient Manuscripts
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Scholars used donkey carts, boats, and teenage couriers to smuggle a priceless collection out of Timbuktu.
  4. Burning History in San Salvador
    Destruction of Historical and Human Rights Archives

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    On Thursday, Nov. 14, three armed men broke into the offices of Pro-Búsqueda. The attack on Pro-Búsqueda was not a random crime. We should be worried about what is happening in El Salvador.
  5. Canada's Science Library Closures Mirror Bush's Playbook
    Similar moves by US Republican president met sharp backlash from 10,000 scientists.

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    The Harper government is now eliminating seven Department of Fishery libraries containing one of the world's most comprehensive collections of information on fisheries, aquatic sciences and nautical sciences.
  6. Connexions Library: History Focus Page
    Resource Type: Website
    Published: 2012
    Selected articles, books, documents and other resources on historical topics.
  7. Cuts and Closures at Canada's federal libraries
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Federal libraries are an important part of Canada’s cultural heritage. These specialist libraries house some of Canada’s most important collections. Dozens of federal departmental libraries across the country have been closed or are destined for closure within the next year.
  8. DFO Library Closures Anger Scientific Community
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    When word first broke that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was closing seven of their libraries, government officials promised that there would be no loss of vital historical material. Today many are skeptical of those claims.
  9. The Digital Dark Ages: Movies and Books Get Deleted as Selfies Pile Up
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Historians and archivists call our times the "digital dark ages." The name evokes the medieval period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which led to a radical decline in the recorded history of the West for 1000 years. But don't blame the Visigoths or the Vandals. The culprit is the ephemeral nature of digital recording devices. Remember all the stuff you stored on floppy discs, now lost forever? Over the last 25 years, we've seen big 8" floppies replaced by 5.25" medium replaced by little 3.5" floppies, Zip discs and CD-ROMs, external hard drives and now the Cloud -- and let's not forget memory sticks and also-rans like the DAT and Minidisc.
  10. Dismantling of Fishery Library 'Like a Book Burning,' Say Scientists
    Harper government shuts down 'world class' collection on freshwater science and protection

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    The Harper government has dismantled one of the world's top aquatic and fishery libraries as part of its agenda to reduce government as well as limit the role of environmental science in policy decision-making.
  11. Double Fold
    Libraries and the Assault on Paper

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2001
    Double Fold examines the preservation of books in United States libraries over the past 50 years. It details the libraries' "war" on books -- the alarming lack of preservation and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of irreplacable bound originals including 19th-century illustrated dailies. He chronicles the attempts to find ways of preserving books from both the ravages of time and the librairies' lack of shelf space. He also explains how librairies use the spectre of disintegrating books as part of their fundraising stategy. Baker offers aternative solutions to these problems. His ultimate and pesuasive plea is for librairies to stop "executing" the originals.
  12. Double Fold (Wikipedia article about the book by Nicholson Baker)
    Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2007
    Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper is a non-fiction book by Nicholson Baker that was published in April, 2001.
  13. Eric Marshall laments closure of namesake Fisheries library
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    The government seems to be saying 'We want to exploit our natural resources, whether it's natural gas or oil sands, and basically to heck with environmental impacts.'
  14. Files linking Britain to Israel's nuclear weapons go missing from National Archives
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Official documents on Britain's relationship with Israel, including papers on "military and nuclear collaboration" in the 1970s, have disappeared from the National Archives in the last four years.
  15. For the Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story - in pictures
    Resource Type: Photo/Image/Poster
    Published: 2012
    During the Bosnian war, a group of men and women risked their lives to rescue thousands of irreplaceable Islamic manuscripts -- and preserve a nation's history. Amid bullets and bombs, this handful of passionate book-lovers safeguarded more than 10,000 unique, hand-written antique books and documents -- the most important texts held by Sarajevo's Gazi Husrav Beg Library, founded in 1537.
    As the 20th anniversary of the start of the siege of Sarajevo approaches, a documentary airing tonight on BBC4 tells the story of this extraordinary bid to protect a nation's history. Here are a few of the film's most striking images
  16. The History Thieves
    Secrets, Lies, and the Shaping of a Modern Nation

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2016
    Ian Cobain uncovers the role of secrecy in the British state - and the lies, omissions and misrepresentations we've been fed to maintain the facade of a fair and just Britain.
  17. The History Thieves - Review
    How Britain covered up its imperial crimes

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2016
    A review of Ian Cobain's book The History Thieves, an engrossing study which identifies secrecy as a 'very British disease', exploring how, as the empire came to an end, government officials burned the records of imperial rule.
  18. A Hundred Years Gone: The Sack of Louvain
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    Marie-Therese Delcom sits at an outdoor cafe in the Belgian town of Leuven, rustling through faded family photos from the First World War. In one of them, her paternal grandfather is digging his own grave, invading German soldiers standing at the ready.
  19. IntelligentSearch.ca
    Resource Type: Website
    Published: 2017
    A web portal featuring topics related to research and the Internet. The home page features a selection of recent and important articles. A search feature, subject index, and other research tools make it possible to find additional resources and information.
  20. Kill The Messengers
    Stephen Harper's Assault on Your Right to Know

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2015
    Ottawa has become a place where the nation's business is done in secret, and access to information - the lifeblood of democracy in Canada - is under attack.
  21. Lavon Affair
    Wikipedia article

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1954
    The Lavon Affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, code named Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation, a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned civilian targets, cinemas, libraries and American educational centres. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of violence and instability.
  22. List of destroyed libraries
    Wikipedia article

    Resource Type: Article
    Libraries have been deliberately or accidentally destroyed or badly damaged. Sometimes a library is purposely destroyed as a form of cultural cleansing.
  23. Loss of Librarians Devastating to Science and Knowledge in Canada
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    The closure of federal libraries and loss of specialized librarians impacts negatively on the state of science and knowledge in Canada.
  24. Lost Memory: Libraries and Archives destroyed in the Twentieth Century
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1996
    This document lists major disasters that have destroyed or caused irreparable damage during the 20th century to libraries and archives, whether written of audio-visual.
  25. Mali: Timbuktu's literary gems face Islamists and decay in fight for survival
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Daring by a dedicated few saved many manuscripts in Mali from Islamists.
  26. Memory hole
    Wikipedia article

    Resource Type: Article
    A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened. The concept was first popularized by George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Party's Ministry of Truth systematically re-created all potential historical documents, in effect, re-writing all of history to match the often-changing state propaganda.
  27. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 29, 2015
    Land seizures and land take-overs

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2015
    This issue of Other Voices focuses on the issue of land seizures and land take-overs. Also included: Greece's solidarity movement, and the challenges and opportunities it faces after the election of a Syrizia government. From the archives, there are interviews about the 1974 occupation of Anicinabe Park, an article about anti-dicrimination fighter Viola Desmond, and the publication, in 1929, of All Quiet on the Western Front.
  28. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 9, 2016
    Corporate Crime

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2016
    Corporations have increasingly become legally unaccountable for their behaviour. Yet all too often corporations break the law and engage in criminals acts which would be severely punished if they were committed by ordinary individuals. These illegal acts range from deliberate health and safety violations that cost lives, to land seizures, to environmental negligence that contaminates lands and waters. Most of these illegal acts are never prosecuted, and those that are, are usually dealt with by a fine that corporations can treat as a cost of doing business.
    There are movements demanding that corporations be held accountable for their crimes in a serious way, and, specifically, that corporate executives should face jail time when the corporation they are in charge of engage in behaviour that causes death, injury, and illness. Our topic of the week for this issue of Other Voices is Corporate Crime, and a number articles, as well as a book, a film, and a website, explore aspects of the problem.
  29. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 7, 2016
    Depression and Joy

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2016
    It's a difficult thing to measure, but there are strong reasons for believing that the number of people struggling with depression has increased significantly in recent decades. Despite the evidence that this is a social problem, and not merely an individual misfortune, the solutions and escapes on offer are almost all individual: pharmaceuticals and therapy, on the one hand; self-medication with alcohol, streets drugs, television, etc., on the other. Certainly there are individual circumstances and individual causes, but when millions of people are experiencing the same thing, we need to be looking not only at the individual, but also at the society.
  30. The Prosecution of War Crimes for the Destruction of Libraries and Archives during Times of Armed Conflict
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2005
  31. Protest Against Closing Down the Lukács Archiv
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    We, the undersigned, wish to express our deepest worries about the resolution of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to close down the Lukács Archives in Budapest. Görgy Lukács was one the significant philosophers of the 20th century, an author of modernity outstanding not only in philosophy but also in the fields of political mindedness, theory of literature, sociology and ethics An author of international renown, Lukács represented one of the intellectual peaks in Hungary's history of civilisation, his works constitute a part of the treasures of humankind. For decades, the Lukács Archives has facilitated academic and non-academic circles to have access to the documents related to the philosopher's life and professional achievements. As it is located in the philosopher's home of his late years, it has also served as a memorial place devoted to a decisive personality of our era. Based on the above, we call on the authorities in charge to re-consider their decision, which took the international community of science and art by consternation and sorrow.
  32. Save the feature before it explodes
    Several films directed by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1920s are being fully restored

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2011
    Nine films Hitchcock directed during the 1920s will be restored by archivists at the British Film Institute before the volatile nitrate reels combust. The film archivists' work and the hirstory of the profession are chronicled in this article.
  33. Scientists Protest Canada's War on Science
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    The Harper government is closing libraries, trashing documents and firing thousands of scientists — while handing out billions in subsidies to oil companies.
  34. Secret Memo Casts Doubt on Feds' Claims for Science Library Closures
    Goal stated is 'culling' research, not preserving and sharing through digitization

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    A federal document marked "secret" obtained by Postmedia News indicates the closure or destruction of more than half a dozen world famous science libraries has little if anything to do with digitizing books as claimed by the Harper government.
  35. South Sudan archivists fear loss of historical texts
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2018
    South Sudan doesn't have a museum, so thousands of archival documents are sitting in a small building in the capital, Juba, waiting for a national archives to be built. The project will also need the help of international donors to get off the ground, and the ongoing conflict has made it difficult to secure funding.
  36. Spread of knowledge in peril as Canada shuts federal department libraries
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
  37. The treasures of Timbuktu
    The race is on to preserve papers dating back to a west African golden age

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2007
    West African scholars are quickly discovering the wealth of manuscripts burried in and near Timbuktu dating from the 11th century. Governments and universities are building archives in which to house and digitize these important relics.
  38. UK Ordered Destruction Of 'Embarrassing' Colonial Papers
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Britain systematically destroyed documents in colonies that were about to gain independence, declassified Foreign Office files reveal. Operation Legacy saw sensitive documents secretly burnt or dumped to cover up traces of British activities.
  39. What's Driving Chaotic Dismantling of Canada's Science Libraries?
    Scientists reject Harper government claims vital material is being saved digitally

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Scientists say the closure of some of the world's finest fishery, ocean and environmental libraries by the Harper government has been so chaotic that irreplaceable collections of intellectual capital built by Canadian taxpayers for future generations has been lost forever. Many collections ended up in dumpsters while others such as Winnipeg's historic Freshwater Institute library were scavenged by citizens, scientists and local environmental consultants. Others were burned or went to landfills.
  40. Whose Archive? Whose History? Destruction of Archives at Ruskin College, Oxford
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    A repository of lived experience of the trade union and labour movement of the twentieth century is being deliberately trashed.


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