LIBRARY NOTES
From the Chairman of the Board: Spring 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Many of you may have read the sobering report in the February 7, 2007 New York Times about a diary published by Saad Eskander, director of the National Library and Archive in Baghdad. This brave librarian's online journal
describes the harrowing conditions he and his colleagues endure to maintain this important repository of knowledge amidst the civil war that is devastating his ancient city. In slightly flawed English, he writes vividly and touchingly of the murder and kidnapping of his fellow librarians, the exhausting effort to restore and keep open a building ravaged by burning and looting, and the frustrations of imploring government officials to provide desperately needed funds, when they are streched thin with military and medical allocations.
From the comfort of our own civilized haven on 79th Street, it is sad to observe the struggle of this leading center of culture in what was once the cradle of civilization. It was in Nineveh (on the Tigris, north of modern Baghdad) that the Assyrian king and lover of literature, Ashurbanipal, created one of the great libraries of ancient times over his long reign, 668-627 b.c. It was there in the late nineteenth century that British archaeologists unearthed the most complete text of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Tyrant though he was- it is said that many of the thousands of cuneiform tablets he acquired for his impressive library were looted from other collections- Ashurbanipal surely would not have hesitated to devote his resources to protecting the collections, facilities and personnel of his great library's modern successor.
But there may be hope in the history of our own distinguished institution's perseverance. The New York Society Library is no stranger to the deprivations of warfare. First established in a room in what was then City Hall, it was looted by British soldiers during the Revolutionary War occupation of New York City. A trustee reported that the Redcoats bartered our stolen books for grog. For more than fourteen years (1774-1788), the Library was closed, "the accidents of the late war having nearly destroyed the former Library," as mournfully noted in our minutes. Yet the Society Library proudly rose from the ashes. After the war, we opened our doors in another room in the same building, now remodeled as Federal Hall to house the fledgling United States government. Readers such as George Washington, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton helped revive and enhance our status as a refuge for culture, and hundreds of volumes were recovered from storage in St. Paul's Church. We were able to rebuild our collections and embark on more than two centuries of uninterrupted service to readers and writers. May it be so for our colleagues at the National Library and Archive in Baghdad.
You can read Mr. Eskander's online diary through the British Library's website and
The National Library
Charles G. Berry
Chairman of the Board
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