Information hunters : when librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War II Europe

Resource Information

The work Information hunters : when librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War II Europe represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Manchester City Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Information hunters : when librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War II Europe

Title remainder

when librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War II Europe

Statement of responsibility

Kathy Peiss

Title variation

• 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

Creator

• Peiss, Kathy Lee

Author

• Peiss, Kathy Lee

Subject

• Books -- Europe -- History -- 20th century
• Cultural property -- Protection -- Europe -- History -- 20th century
• History
• Intelligence service -- United States -- Information services
• Librarians -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• 1900-1999
• United States, Office of Strategic Services
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Confiscations and contributions -- Europe
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Destruction and pillage -- Europe
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Military intelligence -- United States
• Library of Congress Mission to Germany
• Acquisitions (Libraries) -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Genre

• History

Language

eng

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."--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

940.54/8673094

Illustrations

• illustrations
• photographs

Index

index present

LC call number

D810.C8

LC item number

P45 2020

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography