These two books on the subject might be useful. I had to remove two
letters from the word (ra**) in the second review because our filters
bounced the email back.
1. Lost Libraries : the destruction of great book collections since
antiquity by James Raven
Amazon Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great
libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political
and cultural consequences of loss. Fourteen original contributions,
introduced by a major re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the
first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book
history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and
monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries,
and the recent horrifying pillage and burning in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq.
About the Author
James Raven is a Professor of Modern History, University of Essex.
2. Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in
the Twentieth Century by Rebecca Knuth
Amazon Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Lurking behind the academic prose of this historical survey is a
compelling, provocative analysis of "libricide," the systematic
destruction or robbery of books and other cultural artifacts as part of
an ideological campaign against a group or nation. Focusing on five case
studies-Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait, China and Tibet-Knuth, a professor of
library and information science at the University of Hawaii, argues that
libricide often coincides with, or even precedes, genocide. The earliest
modern example of such a pattern occurred in Germany, where the Nazi
regime "purified" national libraries of Jewish content and selectively
"looted, destroyed, and pulped" libraries of German-occupied countries
as part of their program to create a homogenized, Aryan state.
Similarly, during Hussein's six-month occupation of Kuwait in 1989-90,
Iraqis destroyed 43% of the book stocks in school libraries even as they
subjected the resident population to "the horrors of torture, ra**, and
summary execution." The Serbs, Knuth documents, destroyed a good part of
the cultural heritage of Bosnian Moslems, Croats, and Slovenes; the
Chinese conducted not only the appalling Cultural Revolution, but also
the near obliteration of traditional Tibetan culture. The opening three
chapters of this book, which offer a theoretical framework for the
libricide-genocide connection, and the conclusion, which sets Knuth's
argument in context of other genocide studies, are written in a much
drier, more academic style than the five case histories. However,
Knuth's argument is powerfully drawn and deserves a wider audience than
the scholarly and library professional readership for which it seems
rather clearly intended.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Regards,
Mirjana Orovic
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