Fire at National Library of Armenia destroys digital document servers

A fire took place in the National Library of Armenia, damaging servers on which digital versions of books and periodicals in Armenian were stored.

Because of the coronavirus crisis in Armenia, library staff are working online, in remote mode. When it was noted the site was not available, the library staff, along with the police guarding the building, came in to check on the building and found the burned-out servers.

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The digital information of the National Library had been put together over the course of almost 20 years. Many researchers and simply readers used it its open access source documents both in Armenia itself and abroad.

The cause of the fire has not yet been clarified. It is also not clear whether it will be possible to recover information stored on the destroyed servers. However, according to the acting director Hrach Saribekyan, the evaluation of their appearance by the library specialist is encouraging:

“A full assessment can be given only after verification, which will become possible after the Ministry of Emergencies will consider the case.”

However, according to Saribekyan, all the digitized and archived material that was on the server devices is stored on separate media, that is, in any case, it is not lost. And the library is already working to make online materials again available to readers.