Target Audience: FCIL, academic, and socially responsible law librarians interested in libraries as cultural institutions that must be rebuilt after man-made catastrophes
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to explain U.S. accession to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the work of UNESCO as "lead agency for the protection of the world's documentary heritage in libraries and archives."
2. Participants will be able to participate in the rebuilding of national libraries and archives destroyed in the Balkan, Iraqi, and Afghan conflicts.
"Libricide" is a recently coined term for the destruction of a culture's memory by obliterating its historical documentary record. Beginning with the Lieber Code in the U.S. Civil War, libraries were recognized as institutions to be safeguarded during wartime; the hanging of Hitler's chief plunderer in the Nuremberg trials was crucial recognition of destruction of cultural property as a potential war crime. The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two additions completed the process and led to its inclusion in the Serbian war crimes trials. Destruction of the Iraqi national archives, the ongoing plunder of archeological sites and academic libraries, and sales of Sumerian tablets and other pre-Islamic cuneiforms make this a topic of current and urgent interest to librarians and legal researchers. This program will examine 20th century instances of state-sponsored libricide, the development of the Hague Convention with an assessment of its use to date, and the efforts of the international library community to rebuild destroyed libraries and archives.