Lac-Mégantic and the importance of digital archiving

By Rick Anderson. The loss of the commercially published books and recordings held in the library’s general collection is truly unfortunate - but the loss of the archive is tragic. The tragedy of the train wreck and oil fire in Lac-Mégantic, Québec is, first and foremost, a human one, with close to 50 people killed and the homes and businesses of many survivors destroyed. But a smaller tragedy has also come to light, one that should give pause to libraries and the institutions (academic and political) that sponsor them. A recent article in Library Journal reports that one casualty of the explosion and fire in Lac-Mégantic was the village’s library and its collection, “which included more than 60,000 books, CDs, and DVDs, and a local history archive.”
The loss of the commercially published books and recordings held in the library’s general collection is truly unfortunate — but the loss of the archive is tragic. More...