Becoming the Digital Monuments Men

Information is the most valuable currency in the world. As such, human progress depends on the accumulation and preservation of information for the continuing historical record. When the information gathered over years upon years of effort is destroyed by an act of war, it not only erases valuable and irreplaceable knowledge from the world’s codex, but leaves a hole for future generations to try to fill in. War is simply a fact of life for many citizens around the globe both in the present day and throughout history. Having a plan in place to protect precious cultural artifacts and records should be common sense, but many countries and communities are lacking in this regard. It isn’t hard to fathom why the categorical destruction of libraries and cultural institutions, as well as the looting of precious artifacts, is one of the first acts and part of the greater plan that an opposing force commits when conquering another nation, and it’s now up to librarians and archivists to utilize their roles in preserving this data.

Libraries are not only a place that hold records and books, but are also revered as cultural centers in many parts of the world. They hold a community’s identity and history within their walls, and serve as a resource for many different kinds of services to their patrons. In times of conflict, libraries can be damaged or destroyed simply as collateral damage, but much more often than not, they are considered high value targets and are destroyed as part of a coordinated effort to erase the culture and destroy evidence and records of a culture’s history within a particular region (Cook, 2008). This includes erasing ethnic, religious, and cultural memories to undermine or eliminate groups’ identities and existence (Zgonjanin, 2005), appropriating cultural and material wealth, as well as looting which becomes a perverted view of preservation (Moustafa, 2016).

Prior to the twentieth century, there are many examples of the destruction of libraries and archives during armed conflicts throughout ancient China, Egypt, Middle East, the Byzantine Empire, and other stand out examples such as the smashing and looting of the Cornish colleges at Glasney and Clantock in 1548 by Royal officials in England. The officials, doing the bidding of King Henry VIII during the Reformation, brought an end to the formal scholarship which had helped to sustain the Cornish language and Cornish cultural identity in the South of England (Whetter). As of a 2018 study, some 3,000 people have minimal skills in Cornish, including around 500 estimated to be fluent (Ferdinand, 2020). Prior studies show these numbers to be an increase over time. Like a few other nearly lost languages, Cornish is seeing a revival, but just as many languages of old are being lost to time as their native speakers are not passing on the mother tongue or have faced the destruction of their cultural centers. 

An egregious example in the twentieth century occurred at the hands of the Nazis during their occupation of Europe between 1939 and 1945. The Nazis not only looted everything from the souls that they sent to the concentration camps, to which the extent of the loss of these private libraries and collections is unknown, but their occupation caused the loss of a massive amount of known cultural heritage as they cut a swath across the continent. On their own, Polish libraries lost much of their collateral with the National Library of Warsaw losing about 700,000 volumes, including all of its manuscripts and map collections. The German army burned the main stacks of the Warsaw Public Library and approximately 15 million of the 22.5 million volumes in all Polish libraries were destroyed (Moustafa). That was just the loss in Poland. When you consider all the other countries that the Nazis occupied, there is a loss of culture, let alone the millions of people who suffered at their hands, in every country that the Nazis touched.

The subsequent diminishment and revival of the Cornish language is just one example of what erasure of culture can do to a people, and World War II shows it on a much bigger scale. It should be mentioned that it wasn’t an opposing force on another country in regards to the Cornish, but was mandated by Henry VIII on his own citizens. The same can be said for the Nazis in some occupied territories. Regardless, the systematic destruction of cultural heritage, at times, never seems to be a lesson in which humans, as a whole, learn to avoid. Attacking forces routinely pass off blame by saying that the leveling of a museum or library was accidental. However, in different wars and different time periods, invading armies have been reported as having possession of highly precise military maps and knowledge of the areas in which they plan to bomb. The knowledge is at their fingertips and they know what will hurt the morale of those whom they are attacking. It is quite hard to believe that the concentration of shelling on locations of high cultural existence is wholly accidental (Cook). 

One way to combat the loss of a culture’s information would be to consider mandating a disaster management plan..While this wouldn’t have been an option for the Cornish in the 1540s or even the countries of Europe in World War II, it’s surely something that historians and fluent speakers could conquer in today’s world. In the Middle East especially, a plan like this would have been most helpful with thought to the decades of war and Taliban leadership endured by the area. A survey conducted by Moustafa in 2014, which included eighty-six academic, national, and public libraries and archives in nineteen Middle East countries, found that 84 percent did not have a written disaster management plan in place. Out of the eighty-six, only thirteen institutions responded affirmatively and another five said they were in the process of preparing disaster management plans. Furthermore, of the thirteen positive responses, only seven reported having disaster management plans for both times of war and natural disasters. The other six institutions only had one in place for natural disasters. Conclusions from the survey determine that Middle Eastern libraries and archives would be at a high risk of losing part or all of their collections (Moustafa).         

While an initiative such as the following would not be feasible in every conflict, this author would be remiss to leave out the incredible work done by the collective efforts of the Monuments Men. This collective of librarians, scholars, and ordinary citizens during World War II fought to preserve Europe’s cultural heritage. The goal of the Monuments Men was to minimize looting and identify looted items, to give first aid to art and books, and to engage in the recovery and restitution of cultural materials. Such was the priority to save and preserve that on the eve of D-Day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower charged American soldiers with the specific and vitally important responsibility to protect the cultural heritage of Europe (Moustafa). After the fall of Nazi Germany and with all thanks to the Monuments Men, 26,568 items were repatriated to Rome, 78,000 to the Netherlands, 700,000 items to the Prussian State Library in Berlin, 153,000 items to France, and finally 2.8 million items to their private owners in fourteen nations or to responsible institutions or persons if the original owners were deceased (Moustafa). 

The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a modern day lesson in this categorical destruction. In regard to the most recent of these, the American Library Association Council passed a resolution on July 25, 2022 condemning the enormous damage and destruction of Ukrainian cultural resources resulting from the continued occupation of Ukraine by the Russian Federation government. According to UNESCO, as of May 29, 2022, 1,888 education institutions have suffered bombing and shelling and 180 had been destroyed completely. As of August 29, 2022, 9 libraries, 78 religious sites, 13 museums, 35 historic buildings, 31 buildings dedicated to cultural activities, and 17 monuments had been damaged in addition to the unconscionable loss of human life (American Library Association, 2022). This is on top of the loss of Ukraine’s libraries as a safe environment and resource to their surrounding communities through their services. 

There is a positive, amongst all the tragedy, while living in the information and/or digitization age. As Buckland says in Information and Society, “no individual can know everyone else in the world, every place, every institution, every build, and every event. We cannot attend to every media outlet or publication. Each of us knows a lot less than is in principle knowable (Buckland, 2017).”  While Buckland’s statement is true to an extent, it does not take into account when people unite under one cause to achieve a common goal via the Internet. One benefit to living in the era in which the world is currently is the ability to digitize library materials, particularly that of rare or unique items which can be preemptively copied and distributed to ensure that something remains if the originals are lost (Cook). Obviously, this is no substitute for the real physical items, but it does ensure that those pieces of information are not lost to history. 

Today’s librarians and archivists are becoming digital Monuments Men in the effort to preserve and protect information, as the targeting of libraries and other cultural institutions continues even in the year 2022. Unfortunately, unless some form of digitization has taken place, it is only once fighting has ceased that rebuilding and re-amassing of collections can begin anew. Librarians, archivists, and curators are the first line of defense to protect information prior to conflict, during a conflict, and during the subsequent revitalization of a civilization’s libraries once a conflict has concluded (Cook). The loss or potential loss of information cannot compare to the loss of a single human life, but the preservation of a people’s history, culture, and sheer evidence that they were on this Earth is a job that should not be taken lightly. 

References

American Library Association. (2022, July 19). Ala condemns destruction of libraries, schools, and cultural institutions in Ukraine. News and Press Center. Retrieved September 2, 2022, from https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2022/07/ala-condemns-destruction-libraries-schools-and-cultural-institutions-ukraine 

Buckland, M. (2017). Information and Society. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Cook, H. (2008). The deliberate destruction of libraries in wartime: Sarajevo and beyond. Focus on International Library and Information Work, 39 (2), 56-59.

Ferdinand, S. (2020). Implementing cornish in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: Attitudes by the population. Studia Celtica Fennica, 16. https://doi.org/10.33353/scf.79496 

Moustafa, L. H. (2016). Cultural Heritage and Preservation: Lessons from World War II and the contemporary conflict in the Middle East. The American Archivist, 79(2), 320–338. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-79.2.320 

Whetter, J. (n.d.). Glasney college: Penryn Cornwall UK. Glasney College | Penryn Cornwall UK. Retrieved September 2, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20060101070704/http://connexions.co.uk/glasney/ 

Zgonjanin, S. (2005). The prosecution of war crimes for the destruction of libraries and archives during times of armed conflict. Libraries & Culture, 40(2), 128.