Fire destroys historic documents in Moscow library

Before the blaze: the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, Moscow. Image by Sergey Norin / CC BY 2.0

A massive fire which raged for two days in Moscow’s Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences has damaged or destroyed more than a million historic documents. The blaze ravaged some 2000 square metres, with 200 firefighters involved in efforts to extinguish it. The institute holds one of Russia’s largest university libraries. The library had around 10 million documents, some of them from the 16th century, and one of the world’s richest collections of works in Slavic languages. According to reports, 15% of the collection has been damaged. Read more: theguardian.com