"A single completed manuscript and hundreds of fragments were found when reconstruction work was undertaken on the ancient tower, which is probably well over a millennium old. The library had originally been established there, since it was the most protected part of the monastery, but the first floor collapsed around five centuries ago and a new wooden floor was simply inserted above. Recently the rubble of the earlier floor was removed during renovations, and curator Father Bigoul found a complete manuscript, embedded in a section of disused water pipe (it is unclear if it was hidden there for safekeeping or got there by accident)."Yes, the books appear to have been discarded by an older generation, but we also find here an example of why no literature should be lost or destroyed. Every fragment offers a glimpse into our collective history.
Books It's staggering that as we lurch towards an almost total dependancy on digital media to store our words imperpetuity, the most durable format still seems to be paper. As we've discussed before the trouble with digital media is that as time passes new technologies can mean the peoples words become inaccessable. In order for them to be 'cross-compatible' we need a hard copy for storage anyway. Any argument for continued use of paper must include the recent discover in an Egyptian monastry of descipherable manuscripts from fifteen hundred years ago.
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