- Summary
- "Information Hunters examines the unprecedented American effort to acquire foreign publications and information in World War II Europe. An unlikely band of librarians, scholars, soldiers, and spies went to Europe to collect books and documents to aid the Allies' cause. They travelled to neutral cities to find enemy publications for intelligence analysis and followed advancing armies to capture records in a massive program of confiscation. After the war, they seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools and gathered together countless looted Jewish books. Improvising library techniques in wartime conditions, they contributed to Allied intelligence, preserved endangered books, engaged in restitution, and participated in the denazification of book collections. Information Hunters explores what collecting meant to the men and women who embarked on these missions, and how the challenges of a total war led to an intense focus on books and documents. It uncovers the worlds of collecting, in spy-ridden Stockholm and Lisbon, in liberated Paris and devastated Berlin, and in German caves and mineshafts. The wartime collecting missions had lasting effects. They intensified the relationship between libraries and academic institutions, on the one hand, and the government and military, on the other. Book and document acquisition became part of the apparatus of national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. These efforts also spurred the development of information science and boosted research libraries' ambitions to be great national repositories for research and the dissemination of knowledge that would support American global leadership, politically and intellectually."-- Provided by publisher.
- Variant Title
- When librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War II Europe
When librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War Two Europe
When librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War 2 Europe
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Peiss, Kathy Lee, author.
- Published
- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]
- Locale
- Europe
United States
Europa
USA
- Contents
-
Country of the mind must also attack
Librarians and collectors go to war
Wild scramble for documents
Acquisitions on a grand scale
Fugitive records of war
Book burning, American style
Not a library, but a large depot of loot.
- Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-259) and index.
Country of the mind must also attack -- Librarians and collectors go to war -- Wild scramble for documents -- Acquisitions on a grand scale -- Fugitive records of war -- Book burning, American style -- Not a library, but a large depot of loot.
