{"id":190,"date":"2008-01-09T10:35:34","date_gmt":"2008-01-09T17:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=190"},"modified":"2008-01-09T10:35:34","modified_gmt":"2008-01-09T17:35:34","slug":"saad-eskander-director-of-iraqs-national-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2008\/01\/saad-eskander-director-of-iraqs-national-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Saad Eskander, Director of Iraq&#8217;s National Library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From November 2006 to July 2007 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/iraqdiary.html\">Saad Eskander wrote a diary<\/a> which was published in various places, including the British Library&#8217;s website. Although the diary finishes with him feeling he has exploited the situation his staff are in, and &#8217;emotionally blackmailed&#8217; the readers, I do not think that the latter is true in any way.<\/p>\n<p>The diary makes difficult reading. Although there are many descriptions of the difficulties, the one that stayed with me after reading the diary was the following short passage:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<span class=\"text\">A stray bullet smashed a small window at the Acquisition Department.               The Head of the Department had to clean her desk and chair from               broken glasses before she could begin her work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The way the stray bullet is treated here &#8211; not an issue apart from the mess caused, reflects for me the bravery of staff working under these conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Saad Eskander was recently awarded the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/news\/2007\/pressrelease20071127a.html\">Scone Foundation&#8217;s Archivist of the Year<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\nI haven&#8217;t had a chance to listen to this interview from Radio 4 yet&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/radio4\/takingastand\/pip\/0u2j8\/\">BBC &#8211; Radio 4 &#8211; Taking a Stand &#8211; 8 January 2008<\/a> &#8211; this is available for the next week<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right; font-size: 8px\">Blogged with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flock.com\/blogged-with-flock\" title=\"Flock\" target=\"_new\">Flock<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From November 2006 to July 2007 Saad Eskander wrote a diary which was published in various places, including the British Library&#8217;s website. Although the diary finishes with him feeling he has exploited the situation his staff are in, and &#8217;emotionally blackmailed&#8217; the readers, I do not think that the latter is true in any way. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}