Baghdad Day to Day: Librarian's Journal

When the Saddam regime was toppled in 2003, the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad was set alight and looted. Much damage was done, in particular to the library’s archive collections. For several months, the diary entries ofDr. Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq's National Library and Archives, have apeared on the Web site of the British Library and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq's central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and just staying alive. An article about Eskander and the library appears in the Arts section of the New York Times today available on the library page. You can read the diary entries at http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html.