CALL FOR PAPERS: What do we lose when we lose a library? A conference about the future challenges of libraries, KU Leuven, University Hall & University Library, 9 – 11 September 2015. A collaboration of the University of Leuven, Goethe-Institut Brüssel & British Council Brussels.
100 years ago, during the Great War, in the night of 25-26 August 1914, soldiers set the fourteenth-century University Hall and its eighteenth-century library wing of the University of Leuven (Belgium) ablaze. This was part of The Sack of Louvain, which made a tremendous impression on international public opinion. There was no hesitation in denouncing this act with powerful words and historical comparisons. The plundering of Leuven could clearly be compared with the sacking of Rome in 1527 and the Leuven Library fire with that of Alexandria.
To commemorate the centenary of the destruction of the Library in 1914, the Goethe-Institut Brüssel, the British Council Brussels and the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) are organising a three day international conference on the challenging topic: What do we lose when we lose a library?
The fragility of libraries in their material and digital dimension remains, 100 years after the fire, one of the greatest challenges for the transmission of human knowledge. The two conference themes Library & Heritage and Library & Digital Challenge will shed light on the vision and approach to the past and the future of libraries.
Repositories with books and data files all over the world are developing strategies and generating research to pass on library and archival materials. The three day conference in Leuven aims to create a platform for cutting edge research and disseminations of ideas in the field of library, information and knowledge preservation. Moreover, it aims to reflect on the importance and the value of the ‘library’ as an institution guaranteeing transmission of knowledge to the next generations.
Scholars in the field of history, library science, information science, digital humanities, cultural and conservation disciplines are invited to submit an abstract. The conference is addressed to scholars as pioneers of organising cultural memory through expertise and knowledge. The aim is to raise worldwide public consciousness of the important task of sharing collective and cultural memory, and to raise awareness of the challenges libraries face in performing this task.
Deadline abstract submission: 2 March 2015.