Comments | scriva: Eulology for an archive

scriva

Eulology for an archive

Mar 04, 2009 07:52

Yesterday, the municipal archive of Cologne collapsed. And I'm even more crushed by the news now than last evening, because it really had time to sink in. The municipal archive of Cologne was the biggest municipal archive north of the Alps. It contained 65.000 medieval diploms, starting with the year 922. Part of its collection were the archive of ( Read more... )

history

Comments 9

eefster March 4 2009, 08:44:09 UTC

That's horrible. Are all of the documents lost now? No chance of recovering any?

I know accidents happen, but I would have thought they'd be extra-careful of a repository like that. Reinforce the building, or something.

scriva March 4 2009, 08:57:39 UTC

Because the entire area of the city is in danger of collapsing or breaking in the ground, it seems that they have to pump beton in the hole really fast, and I don't know how much of the documents can be saved before they do that.

mashiara13 March 4 2009, 12:11:04 UTC

I saw the stories about this, a great loss.

xraytheenforcer March 4 2009, 12:38:22 UTC

Oh my gods, that sucks. I hope they find any missing people safe as well. :(

etrangere March 4 2009, 12:49:48 UTC

OMG this is so tragic :(

v_thundermuffin March 4 2009, 14:15:16 UTC

This is terrible!
I was reading the news and it mentioned (I'm here in the western parts of the US, so I'm sure it's already long past) that they'd poured concrete into the hole. I hope they found the missing people and that they were all right, and also that that some of these documents were recovered before the concrete went in. (Do they know what caused this? Was it work on a subway or something?) I work at a genealogical company and I understand what you mean when you mentioned the inherent and irreplaceable value pf original content. Hopefully at least they had some sort of electronic scans on file?

scriva March 5 2009, 05:13:09 UTC

Thank you for the reply. Regarding the cause, it was not the subway project directly, but earth shifting in the newly constructed tunnel. limecat_lotn has also given another explanaition in his reply below, which also seems fitting, because there were already cracks in the building.

Regarding electronic scans, I'm doubtful, because this would be an expansive enterprise, and most archives don't have the resources.