Massive blaze devastates Russian library housing unique documents, ancient texts

http://rt.com/news/228075-moscow-fire-unique-library/ said:

Massive blaze devastates Russian library housing unique documents, ancient texts

One of Russia's largest academic libraries, which contains millions of unique historic documents, has gone up in flames in Moscow. A part of the building’s roof collapsed before dozens of fire fighters managed to contain the blaze.

The fire erupted at around 10 pm local time (7 pm GMT) on the third floor of the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in Moscow. According to the Emergency Situations Ministry, some 2,000 square meters were engulfed in flames, prompting the roof to cave in.

According to preliminary data, the cause of the fire could be a malfunction of the electrical system, a law-enforcement source told RIA Novosti news agency. “A short circuit in the electrical system is currently being regarded as a primary lead,” he said Saturday.

With 49,000 readers and 330 employees, INION is the largest research center in Russia in the fields of social sciences and humanities. Its collection consists of 14.2 million texts in both ancient and modern European and Asian languages, including rare 400-year-old editions. What’s more, it has one of the biggest collections of books in Slavic languages in the country.

The library, founded in 1918, also can boast the Russia's most complete collection of documents of the League of Nations, the UN, and UNESCO, as well as parliamentarian reports of the United States (since 1789), the UK (since 1803), Italy (since 1897), and many others.

INION has 874 partners in 69 countries of the world, and participates in international book-exchange programs. It is a member of the International Federation of Library Associations.

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http://rt.com/news/228287-moscow-fire-library-destroyed/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=aplication_chrome&utm_campaign=chrome said:

‘Like Chernobyl’: Millions of unique texts lost in Moscow library fire

The massive fire in Russia’s leading academic library may have destroyed some 15 percent of the collection – or roughly two million unique, historic documents. The devastation “resembles Chernobyl,” say academics hoping to save some of the ancient texts.

The blaze – which erupted at around 10 p.m. Moscow time on Friday (7 p.m. GMT), on the third floor of the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in Moscow – was fully extinguished at 11:23 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Emergencies Ministry. Firefighters will continue to pour water over some 2,000 square meters of the damaged building until Sunday morning.

The smoking debris of the library “resembles Chernobyl,” said the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Vladimir Fortov, after he inspected the scene on Nakhimovsky Prospect along with INION director Yuri Pivovarov.

“This is a great loss for science. It is the world’s largest depository of this kind, similar, probably, to the Library of Congress. Here we have the materials which cannot be found elsewhere, and all humanitarian institutions used this library,” Fortov said, as quoted by TASS.

Earlier, the head of RAS estimated that the fire might have affected 15 percent of the library collection, or roughly two million books and texts.

The director of INION called the incident a “tragedy,” as only a small part of the material had digital copies. Luckily, most of the books are stored in the basement and on the first floor of the building – and since the fire started on the third floor, firefighters managed to contain it before the blaze reached the storerooms.

Many of the texts were still damaged by the water, but Pivovarov says there is a good chance they can be saved.

“After the water damage, thanks to modern technology, it is possible to save the books. But after the fire...We cannot turn ashes back into paper,” said the academician. Pivovarov added that the international scientific community has already voiced its desire to help.

“The library will need more than just a restoration, it needs complete reconstruction,” he said, noting that he hopes the government will aid in the effort to save books and rebuild the library, which he estimates will take years.

The press secretary of the Federal Agency of Scientific Organizations, Maria Dokuchaeva, told Interfax that once the area is cleared, INION management will examine the full extent of the damage caused by the massive fire and the efforts to contain it.

The investigation into the cause of the fire is still underway, but arson or closed circuit fire are the main theories the probe is considering.

“A short circuit in the electrical system is currently being regarded as a primary lead,” a law enforcement source told Sputnik on Saturday.

The last inspection of the INION library in March found seven violations, according to the Moscow branch of the Emergencies Ministry. The library was fined 70,000 rubles (US$2,200) and given until January 30, 2015 to fix the violations. The fire ironically erupted exactly on that deadline.

With 49,000 readers and 330 employees, INION is the largest research center in Russia in the fields of social sciences and humanities. Its collection consists of 14.2 million texts in both ancient and modern European and Asian languages, including rare 400-year-old editions. It also has one of the biggest collections of Slavic language books in the country.

The library, founded in 1918, also boasts Russia's most complete collection of documents of the League of Nations, the UN, and UNESCO, as well as parliamentarian reports of the United States (since 1789), the UK (since 1803), Italy (since 1897), and many others.

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Mr.Cyan said:

Hmmmm, i wonder if this is a sign from the universe, or a deliberate sabotage ?

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Tigersoap said:

I was wondering the same as well.
Not sure about what could be gained from a deliberate sabotage though ?

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Keit said:

Tigersoap said:

I was wondering the same as well.
Not sure about what could be gained from a deliberate sabotage though ?

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Yes, I also thought the same, and actually the destruction of the Library of Alexandria also by fire came to mind.

Interestingly enough, Caesar was blamed for burning it once, something that is rather questionable. Also don't remember exactly where, but I think Laura talked about it in one of the books that the destruction of the Library of Alexandria was deliberate in order to make rewriting of the history a bit easier.

So yeah, maybe it was deliberate and maybe symbolic. None the less, very bad sign.

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Data said:

Bummer! :(

I just hope they made physical or digital copies...

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The director of INION called the incident a “tragedy,” as only a small part of the material had digital copies.

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Data said:

Bummer! :(

I just hope they made physical or digital copies...

Click to expand...

Keit said:

Tigersoap said:

I was wondering the same as well.
Not sure about what could be gained from a deliberate sabotage though ?

Click to expand...

Yes, I also thought the same, and actually the destruction of the Library of Alexandria also by fire came to mind.

Interestingly enough, Caesar was blamed for burning it once, something that is rather questionable. Also don't remember exactly where, but I think Laura talked about it in one of the books that the destruction of the Library of Alexandria was deliberate in order to make rewriting of the history a bit easier.

So yeah, maybe it was deliberate and maybe symbolic. None the less, very bad sign.

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"Because of these tragedies we have to depend on disconnected fragments, casual passages and meagre accounts," lamented Australian author Andrew Tomas. "Our distant past is a vacuum filled at random with tablets, parchments, statues, paintings, and various artifacts. The history of science would appear totally different were the book collection of Alexandria intact today.

Always this destruction was done in the name of God or the people. In Rome, the official slogan was Senatus populus quis Romanus, meaning the Senate (government) and the Roman people are one, or synonymous. It was an early and eerie forerunner of the German Nazi slogan Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer, or One People, One Empire, One Leader.

The book burning of the Nazis is well known, but such destruction of knowledge did not stop with the end of World War II. In Iraq, the central al-Awqaf Library, founded in 1920, contained 45,000 rare books and more than 6,000 documents from the Ottoman Empire. At the onset of the U.S. invasion, arsonists set fire to the building in April 2003. Although the staff managed to save 5,250 items, including a collection of older Korans, all else was lost. The fire spread, destroying all 175,000 books and manuscripts at the library of the University of Baghdad's College of Art. The entire library at the University of Basra was reduced to ash, and the Central Public Library in Basra lost 100 percent of its collection. Also lost in the invasion and subsequent occupation were volumes from the Iraqi National Library as well as those at Bayt al-Hikma, the Central Library of the University of Mosul, and others. According to Fernando Baez, director of Venezuela's National Library and author of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, almost one million books and ten million priceless documents have been destroyed, lost, or stolen throughout Iraq since 2003.

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