In today’s New York Times, the dramatic story of how librarians in Iraq’s National Library are dodging bullets and bombs in addition to attempting to restore a measure of normalcy to the library and archives. The library reopened in December for the first time since the US invasion of 2003.
For a month now, library director Saad Eskander’s intermittent diary entries have been appearing on the Web site of the British Library as “Iraq Diary”, and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq’s central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and, oh yes, staying alive.
Read the Diary
It’s shocking, it’s sad, it’s horrific…a microcosm of what is happening in that country. Italy and Britain are doing what they can to assist the Iraq National Library to return to functionality, I wonder if the US is offering any aid or just creating havoc. The January entry lists the number of deaths, death threats and kidnappings to INLA staff.