• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.29-49
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• 2022

The book is a footnote of life and memory, a sign of knowledge and intelligence, including divinity and reason, idols and destruction, praise and curse, arrogance and prejudice, truth and falsehood. The past emperors, monarchs, priests, and rulers have been controlled or slaughtered by censorship and prohibition, burning and destruction, etc. In ancient history, archaeology, war history, cultural history, and library and information science, many studies have been conducted on the burning and destruction of books, but the Western perspective is dominant, and there are nationalistic approaches and logical leaps. This study traced the truth about the destruction of the Royal Library of Alexandria in Egypt, destruction of the Baghdad libraries by the Mongol Empire, and burning more than 200,000 volumes of Korean historical documents of Japanese Government-General in Korea among the major bibliocausts with many mysteries and controversial issues in the East and West. As a result, the Royal Library of Alexandria is most likely destroyed under the rule of the Roman Empire. The massacre of the Baghdad library by the Mongolian army is a historical fact, not the manipulation and extreme exaggeration of western society. And Korean historical documents have been stolen and burned by the Government-General of Chōsen for 35 years and should be recognized as '200,000 + α'. Lastly, On the premise of excavating historical materials, research to investigate the truth behind the blibiocaust or libricide should be continued.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1-23
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• 2022

The record is both an palmistry and a fingerprint for human life and world of knowledge. Books, which are synonymous with records, are a channel through which history is traced and a window to savor. And the most primitive form of the book is the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, and the best part is the manuscript. It refers to the original recorded on papyrus, parchment, paper, etc. and the translated and translated copies of them. If we reflect on the long history of knowledge and culture, the classic manuscripts have continued to scatter and collect like a river flowing through time and space due to not only natural disasters, but also artificial cultural vandalism and the bibliocaust. Therefore, this study traced and linked the wandering and library return of classic manuscripts from ancient Greece to the medieval Renaissance period. As a result, dynasties and empires, monarchs and prime ministers, generals and conquerors, nobles and wealthy, clergy and scholars concentrated on collecting and translating classical manuscripts. If the ancient Greek and Roman scholars did not record knowledge and wisdom in papyrus and parchment, the medieval Byzantine and Islamic Empires did not collect, translate and reproduce classics, the book hunters didn't keep track of the classics, the Renaissance humanists did not restore and reinterpret the classics through intellectual exodus, and the historical library did not collect and preserve the classics and their translations, modern people would not have access to classical knowledge. Nevertheless, the tracing of classical manuscripts is an aporia in which many difficulties and contradictions overlap in the tracing of classic manuscripts due to historical flow, geographical wandering, and linguistic transformation. When a new manuscript is discovered and interpreted, correction and supplementation are inevitable, so the pursuit of the wandering and return of the classic manuscripts through follow-up research must be continued.