When books burn, a part of us goes too. On Sunday, 18 April we saw raging fires cause devastation to the University of Cape Town and surrounding areas. Parts of UCT’s Jagger library have burnt down, including its beautiful reading room. Manuscripts, theses and some of the Special Collection in the African Studies Library have been lost.
This is a grievous loss, but especially so for those of us whose alma mater UCT is. The campus, with its historic buildings, sweeping mountain views and ivy-clad facades also occupies a special place in the life of a city that is both beautiful and complex. The university, Cape Town’s intellectual heart and itself a place of considerable complexity, is South Africa’s oldest university. As PEN South Africa put it so well in its Note of Support to UCT:
UCT scrambles to recover valuable material lost in library fire
By Sisonke Mlamla
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Cape Town - The UCT community, including the alumni, have urged researchers around the world who have photocopies or images of documents destroyed in the Jagger Library fire to contribute those to help recover some of the lost records.
Dr Maha Rafi Atal, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Copenhagen Business School in Frederiksberg, Denmark, took an initiative to establish a registry of copies of materials that researchers have among their research collections.
Atal, who is collecting the information online, said in light of the fire at UCT on Sunday, academics and other researchers around the world who have worked in those special collections and have taken photocopies or mobile phone images of documents may be able to contribute those to help recover some of the lost records.