City archive building collapses in Cologne

[I of the Storm]

Link to CNN

What a horrible thing to happen! 2 people missing so far, and lots and lots of medieval manuscripts most probably lost forever due to wet weather. That archive contained one of the largest collections of sources on Jews in the Middle Ages, apart from many other invaluable collections. I mean, the historical city archive of fricking COLOGNE, one of the most important cities in all of Germany...

That's as terrible as the burnt library of Weimar couple of years ago or that of Lyon even longer ago...



Is there an anti-educational pattern forming...?

[Husar]

one more reason to make digital copies of them all that can be stored redundantly in different places, still nice to have the original but that way at least the texts wouldn't be lost.

The former manager also said he notified the authorities about cracks in the basement some time ago but nothing was done, for now one can just hope that they won't find any dead people inside although some are still missing from what I heard...

edit: I just noticed under the caption in your link it says:

CNN iReporter Andreas Gress [...]

So they're using apple reporters now?

[I of the Storm]

there's some 'iReport.com' thingy on this site too. Odd.