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Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe
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About Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, And
Product Description While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause. Galvanized by the events of war into acquiring and preserving the written word, as well as providing critical information for intelligence purposes, these American civilians set off on missions to gather foreign publications and information across Europe. They journeyed to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was to document, exploit, preserve, and restitute these works, and even, in the case of Nazi literature, to destroy them. In this fascinating account, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front. These collecting missions also boosted the postwar ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for them to become great international repositories of scientific reports, literature, and historical sources. Not only did their wartime work have lasting implications for academic institutions, foreign-policy making, and national security, it also led to the development of today's essential information science tools. Illuminating the growing global power of the United States in the realms of intelligence and cultural heritage, Peiss tells the story of the men and women who went to Europe to collect and protect books and information and in doing so enriches the debates over the use of data in times of both war and peace. Review "In her fascinating new book on information gathering and intelligence during WW II, Peiss spotlights the contributions of the American scholarly community. Her study―impressively researched and engagingly written―explores the ways in which librarians, archivists, and academics traveled throughout Europe to collect information relevant to the war effort....Peiss's narrative traces the work of these scholars from the procurement of open source materials at the beginning of the war through the collection of enemy documents in its closing stages to the thorny questions surrounding mass acquisitions in postwar Germany....In illuminating the link between information science and intelligence gathering, as well as the importance of foreign holdings in libraries as a symbol of American power, Peiss demonstrates that the academic community and military enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship." -- CHOICE "The book is carefully researched, written with care and skill, and provides an additional warning about the horrors of wartime." -- Bob Lane, Metapsychology "Excellent and engaging....[Peiss's] analysis is smart, insightful, and compelling....Thanks to Peiss's informative and original book, we now know...why and how so many war-era German books and documents ended up in American research libraries....The information hunters...contributed to the development of information science,...helped tighten the relations between government, the military, and research university and libraries...and shaped the postwar intelligence activities and tactics of the National Security Agency and the CIA." -- Matthew Avery Sutton, Reviews in American History "In astonishing detail, Peiss's study chronicles the multi-pronged efforts of American librarians, archivists, scholars, and military and intelligence personnel who activated a mass acquisitions programme that resulted in some two mi
