Burning the Books: knowledge under attack from Ancient Assyria to the age of AI
Burning the Books: knowledge under attack from Ancient Assyria to the age of AI
Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow 223rd Annual Lecture Series
Date: Wednesday 02 October 2024
Time: 19:30 - 21:00
Venue: Sir Charles Wilson Building LT 201
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Professor Richard Ovenden, University of Oxford
Website: www.royalphil.org/
This is the first of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow's lecture series for this session. Richard Ovenden is the senior executive officer of the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, and is an active researcher. His recent book Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2021. At once a powerful history of civilisation and a manifesto for the vital importance of physical libraries in our increasingly digital age, Burning the Books is also a very human story animated by an unlikely cast of adventurers, self-taught archaeologists, poets, freedom-fighters — and, of course, librarians and the heroic lengths they will go to preserve and rescue knowledge, ensuring that civilisation survives.