Henk and Fabio,

The context of my sentence was the recent war in Iraq. Of course, many
museums were destroyed in wars and other disasters. The book, "The Rape of
Europa", shows how curators of art galleries began to hide and safeguard
these collections in the months before World War II, because they were well
aware of the destruction of cultural treasures in the previous world war
(e.g., the library of the University of Louvain, Belgium). The French and
Russians successfully hid many art treasurers under the noses of the Nazis,
especially where the threat was perceived early enough. The English and
Germans transferred many art objects into coal and salt mines, with varying
success. The Americans transferred art from coastal cities to inland cities.
Destruction of Italian treasures during the American invasion was
particularly terrible, in part because so much art is there, and so much is
immovable (frescos, statues, architecture), that it is hard to conceive how
any battle could be fought there without harming irreplaceable works.

In a different book whose title I forget ("Wine and War"?), the author
considered wine rather than art to be France's greatest treasure. After all,
the vintages of many years are stored in the cellars of the great
wine-growing regions. He described how a combination of trickery,
concealment, and strategy saved a large proportion of the wine of some
regions, while others suffered worse. For example, during the liberation of
the Rhône valley, the French thoughtfully chose the best wine-growing side
of the valley for their troops while the Americans were asked to reconquer
the other side. The French generals knew that they could minimize the damage
to the vineyards while the Americans would not be so careful.

A few years ago, a traveling exhibit of Polish art came to Huntsville,
Alabama -- an odd venue, because Polish-Americans are few in Alabama. It was
a wonderful show, fully substantiating the histories I had read that said
that Poland was not only one of the largest European countries during the
Renaiassance, but also one of the richest. So much silver! But nearly every
caption explained that this or that object had been recovered from the USSR,
Germany, Austria, or Sweden after having been taken away as a result of war.
I visited Kraków a couple of years ago and was told that this was the only
Polish city never to have been bombed, which was fortunate because it was
also the Renaissance capital. So it still has its magnificent castle and
cathedral on Wawel Hill, and about a quarter of the country's museum
specimens are held in this one city.

And, of course, we can read that the Romans had many libraries, but none of
them survived as such, though a few were preserved here and there unread in
jars left in caves, or as charcoal buried at the foot of Vesuvius. In China,
Hsi Huang-ti said that people would write better if they read less.
Fortunately, the Analects of Confucius survived somehow, but it must have
been risky to hide forbidden books that consisted of bamboo strips threaded
together.

The lesson for the day? Specimens are unique and curators should think
occasionally about what they would do if a flood, fire, or war hit their
collection. Information, however, is not unique, especially digitized
information, and it can be stored in more than one place. Please consider
how to safeguard catalogs and other information in case of disasters, even
small disasters like a computer crash.

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs
To leave this list, click on the following web link:
http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1
Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and
click leave the list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------