It brings on grim associations of 1930’s Germany and the sci-fi movie Fahrenheit 451.<\/p>\n
But hundreds of thousands of books at the Faculty of Humanities (KUA) in Copenhagen are to be put into the incinerator in connection with the set-up of a new knowledge centre in 2013. This is according to the Danish national radio station P4.<\/p>\n
There will be not enough shelf space in the new building, so four department libraries will be forced to get rid of one third of their books. Just one of them, the Saxo-Institute, home of the subjects of history and ethnology, has to get rid of a total of 70,000 books. <\/p>\n
Staff representative at the Faculty of Humanities Christian Troelsg\u00e5rd doesn’t like it at all.<\/p>\n
\u00bbWhen you reduce the book collections in this way, the University of Copenhagen reduces our ability to carry out what we have been hired to do,\u00ab he says, adding that the incineration undermines the foundations of research.<\/p>\n
\u00bbWe don’t like book burnings\u00ab, he adds.<\/p>\n
Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Kirsten Refsing, does not see the book burning as a problem.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIt is OK, because there is no other way to do it. One of our proposals was to offer the books to the students. But this is a problem as the books have been acquired by taxpayers’ funding. As an institution, we just can’t sell them,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n
Lack of space, has the Faculty facing a choice, says Dean Kirsten Refsing:<\/p>\n
\u00bbWe were allowed to build the house, and we were given the choice of filling it with books or students, and we have chosen to fill it with students\u00ab.<\/p>\n
miy@adm.ku.dk<\/p>\n