Edinburgh University Loses
Cybernetics Library in Fire
A fire that apparently broke out in a nightclub in the Old Town district of Edinburgh, Scotland, December 7 spread to the University of Edinburgh’s division of informatics building, where it consumed an irreplaceable library of artificial-intelligence and cybernetics literature. 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.
Librarian Olga Franks, who has worked at the library since it was organized in 1985, told the BBC News December 9 she felt “simply desperate” and added, “I saw this work grow from the size of a cupboard to an immense library. It is still sinking in that all of this material has gone.”
The university has asked former students and teachers for help in rebuilding the resource by contributing their personal copies of books or papers. Professor Michael Fourman, head of the school of informatics, said he was confident of finding temporary accommodation before classes resume in January. “This fortunately happened at the end of term,” he said, “so most students were away or working from home.”
Posted December 16, 2002.
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