Disruption and the Management of Information

Disruption has always been a constant for libraries and librarians, and by modern extension, for information services and information management (IM) professionals.¹ There are the perpetual physical disasters, such as flood, fire, and earthquake, for example, the ancient library of Celsus in Ephesus (earthquake). Disasters of human devising have been no less destructive, including the ravages of war, inadvertent and purposeful in its destruction, from the Imperial Library of Constantinople destroyed in 1204 to the Mosul public library in Iraq in 2015.² And, there are the disruptions in the preservation of knowledge wrought by technology, ranging from the printed page made from any material inscribed by human hand or machine that crumbles into dust, to electronic files unreadable by outdated software and hardware (“bit rot” as Vint Cerf terms it³). At one time or another, these disasters have spelled complete and total destruction for the buildings and the knowledge stored within.