If the past is a land from which we've all emigrated...

Salman Rushdie once said that "it maybe argued the past is a country from which we have all emigrated...and it's loss is part of our common humanity".

Today is May 1.

Mayday.

The day that the Blue Shield Australia group raise awareness of the value of Australian cultural heritage and the need for its protection against threats of all kinds. This campaign on the 1st May each year, and throughout the remainder of the month of May encourages archives, galleries, libraries, museums, and cultural heritage sites across Australia to participate in at least one step to prepare for disaster preparedness and response.

As some of you are aware, I am researching the topic of protecting items of cultural and/or historical significance during times of disasters. My current research project is looking at Special Collections held within University Libraries.

A little while ago, someone asked me if University Libraries were really ever subjected to disasters.

Sadly yes.

As I have begun researching, I’ve come across many examples, some of which are described below in an excerpt from my paper “Protecting the past from disaster: Special Collections in Australian University Libraries”.

The famous National Library Flood of 1966 in Florence is cited as a turning point in disaster management planning and recovery for libraries. Wellheiser and Scott (2002) state that “within the field of preservation…it generated new thinking, collaborative approaches and a wealth of innovative advances that continue to be used and adapted worldwide”.

Pitcure: David Lees, LIFE Magazine

Historically, university libraries, meaning libraries attached to a higher education institution, which serve to support the curriculum and support University research faculties and students, have been subjected to numerous disasters, both man-made and natural.

Picture: Allclip

Examples can be traced back to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, which is often recognised as the first university library to be destroyed during war, most likely by fire, at the hand of Julius Caesar in 48 BC. The University of Alabama library was destroyed in the American Civil War in 1865 and during World War II, numerous university libraries were lost, including over 200,000 books alone in the National University of Tsing Hua in Peking. More recently, the Central University Library in Bucharest was destroyed during the Romanian Revolution in 1989 and the University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina was destroyed during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992.

University libraries are also subject to other causes of disasters, such as the mold outbreak at the University of Iowa in 2002, which destroyed numerous rare books. In Canada in 1985, the Dalhousie University Law Library was affected by fire and recently, although a dispute remains about the cause of the fire, the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, in Moscow, suffered major losses in 2015 in which 15% of the valuable documents held were damaged by fire or water.

Picture: Getty Images, ISISS Moscow

In South Australia, the Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide suffered a major flood in March 2005 when construction works damaged a fire main on North Terrace Campus. In a presentation in 2008 entitled “The Water Incident”, Stephen Beaumont stated that over 200,000 litres of water was released, 1.200 sq.m of internal space was damaged, 40 tonnes of mud affected the library, the IT server room was damaged and the incident closed the University for 3 days. There was potential for the flood to close the University for a semester, which potentially could have cost $90 million in lost revenue.

In the UK, the University of Edinburgh Artificial Intelligence Library was destroyed by fire in 2002. The collection contained some 5,000 books, 800 journals, and 35,000 research papers accumulated over the past 40 years of the school’s preeminence in the field. Flooding caused serious damage to the University of Sussex library in 2004.

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Natural disasters have also affected university libraries in recent years. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 affected over 10 university libraries, especially the University of Tulane that had losses totaling over $30 million. In 1923, an earthquake destroyed the Imperial University Library in Tokyo and the Madras Library in Chennai was affected by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. During the same disaster, the Aceh Documentation and Information Centre, which held rare books and manuscripts, was destroyed.

Australian university libraries currently house over 500 separately listed special collections (Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) database, 2014). Special Collections are collections of material considered special enough to be preserved for future generations. Often they consist of very old, rare, unique, or fragile items and often have either historical, cultural or significant research value. Many collections are often from personal collections by an individual, which reflects their personal interests.

In Australia, this includes irreplaceable collections related to children’s literature, rare publications, photographs, indigenous materials, manuscripts, sheet music, maps, Islamic collections and historical collections, such as the Kipling Collection housed at the University of Sydney. Flinders University library has over 100 special collections alone including the Eros Collection (censorship) and the Bannon Collection (political history).

Needless to say I'm looking forward to learning more about this topic in the coming months and working with my colleagues Associate Professor Valerie Ingham and Dr Dirk Spennemann from Charles Sturt University (CSU), Professor Paul Arbon from Torrens Resilience Insitute and David Howard from Flinders University Library.

References and Useful Links:

Australian Library and Information Association. (2010). ALIA Guide to Disaster Planning, Response and Recovery for Libraries. Melbourne: ALIA. Retrieved from https://www.alia.org.au/information-and-resources/disaster-planning

Beaumont, S. (2008). The Water Incident. Presentation, State Library, South Australia.

International Committee of the Blue Shield. (1998). Radenci Declaration. Slovenia: Blue Shield. Retrieved from http://www.ancbs.org/cms/images/The%201998%20Radenci%20Declaration.pdf

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). (2006). IFLA Disaster Preparedness and Planning: A Brief Manual. Paris: IFLA-PAC. Retrieved from https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/8068

Mackenzie, G. (2000). Working for the Protection of the World’s Cultural Heritage: The International Committee of the Blue Shield. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 21(1), 5-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00379810050006876

Scott, J., & Wellheiser, J. (2003). An Ounce of Preservation: Integrated disaster planning for archives, libraries and record centres. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 24(1), 114-115. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/57611435/6A72A57B63C0425BPQ/2?accountid=10910

Ugwuanyi, R., & Ezema, K. (2015). Managing Disasters in University Libraries in South East Nigeria: preventative, technological and coping measures. Library Philosophy and Practice. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3456&context=libphilprac