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Some of you may remember that Mediawatching reported on the Billion Year Archive project. The aim of the mission was to send a digital library containing all human knowledge to the moon, as a sort of off-world backup that can be used to reboot humanity in the wake of World War Three or the worst ravages of climate change. Unfortunately, the project did not get off to the best of starts. The rocket, which was due to deliver the “library” to the surface of the moon (we did mention that they want to send all human knowledge to the moon, right?) got into difficulty and the library was lost. Now, given that the aim is to have a backup, not being able to find it is a potential spanner in the works. So how do you solve the problem – simple, according to the Florida Times (full story here
https://bit.ly/2sa9T6v), you turn to David Copperfield – the magician, rather than the titular Dickens character. So, just to recap, we are kicking off the new decade with a story about a library that contains a billion years of history getting lost on the moon and a magician doing magic to find it. Life was so much simpler in the 2010s. If that all seems too weird, we are here to restore some balance to your life with a much more believable story from the world of libraries and information – with thanks to Adrian Smith for supplying. With wild fires raging across Australia at the moment, we look back to a similar disaster that took place in California last summer. Bush fires are an annual hazard in the state and 2019 was no exception, with one particular blaze threatening the Ronald Presidential Library. Firefighters were on the scene to help extinguish the flames as they edged towards the library in Simi Valley. However, the Daily Wire (
https://bit.ly/2QY0U0B) reports that a herd of hungry goats had already done most of the hard work. The herd had been put out to pasture on a hillside earlier in the summer, and their efficient grazing meant there was very little vegetation left to fuel the fire. The result was the oncoming fire was forced to change
January-February 2020
direction in the face of a fuel-free stretch of land, thus saving the presidential library from a potential disaster. Apparently, the goats provide a service that many living in California are willing to pay for – with the owners of the herd charging up to $1,000 per acre of brushland cleared. Melissa Giller, Reagan Presidential Library spokeswoman, told local media: “One of the firefighters mentioned that they do believe the goats’ fire line helped them fight this fire. They just proved today how useful they really are.”
More animals, and this time we are back in the UK and the Derbyshire town of Burton – as reported in the Derby Telegraph’s annual round-up of the weird and wonderful from 2019 (
https://bit.ly/2QVOINO).
“What started off as a perfectly normal October day in Burton town centre, quickly turned into something you might have expected to see in a comedy sketch as dozens of cows took over the town.
“Several of the farmyard animals were hanging around on the grassland behind Burton Library, which prompted police officers and plenty of local farmers to help herd the cattle up and drive them back home. “Visitors to Burton library were especially surprised when they looked out the windows, only to see a cow staring back at them, licking the glass.”
We move full circle for our final Firefighter
article of the new year – a tale of a lost repository of human knowledge – apparently deposited in caves 250,000 years ago. The Amazonian Cuevas de los Tayos is the largest network of caves in South America and rumour has it that an ancient, yet advanced, civilisation deposited a secret library carved on metal plates deep in the darkness. Film maker and explorer Alex Chionetti examines the legends of the Elsuive Metal Library of the Tayos Caves at
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/ library-tayos-caves-0013115 – but be warned it is behind a paywall. So, firefighting goats, cows, ancient civilisations and magicians on the moon – welcome to the new decade and Happy New Year. IP
Cuevas de los Tayos: an ancient library? INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 57
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