14.5.20

The Director of the Armenian National Library on the Incident Related to the Servers: "The Materials Are Preserved”


Angela Hambardzumian
Translated by Vartan Matiossian
 

The archived and digitized materials available in the servers of the National Library of Armenia are also preserved in separate drives; therefore, even in the instance that there has been damage to the servers, there has been no loss of archived materials and no danger threatens the integrity of the digitized materials. The acting director of the Armenian National Library of Armenia, Hrachia Saribekian, made these declarations in a conversation with the correspondent of “Armenpress,” referring to the news about the discovery of the library servers damaged by smoke.

“In the state of emergency, the library has only worked online and the servers have been managed remotely. On May 10, aiming to find out about the reasons for the failure of internet connection and the online unavailability of the electronic databases of the NLA, the employees of the NLA, accompanied by one of the policemen in charge of building security, discovered some electrical devices damaged by smoke. The employee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations who works in the building arrived afterwards,” explained the director.

The direction of the library immediately addressed the Minister of Emergency Situations to clarify the nature and circumstances of the events, but the corresponding experts have not yet gone to the library. Since the policemen in charge of building security and the security employee of the NLA noted that there were fluctuations and interruptions in the electrical power, the direction has also addressed the director of ENA (Electric Networks of Armenia), asking for information about planned and cautionary interruptions and fluctuations in the electrical power, which has not been answered yet.

With reference to the technical situation of the servers, Saribekian said that their external evaluation by an expert of the library shows that the situation is hopeful, but full evaluation will be possible after verifying them, which will happen only after the Ministry of Emergency Situations investigates the incident and provides an act about it. Currently, the library has taken steps to move the entire digitized material to the cloud and make it available again to the readers. 


Since May 9, the readers of the National Library of Armenia have not been able to access the website of the library, which they can use freely every day. In response to the inquiries of interested people, the National Library of Armenia has reported on its official page of Facebook that the online electronic databases of the library were temporarily unavailable for technical reasons and the experts were working to restore connection in a short of period. Nevertheless, there were news circulating on the Internet about the entire digitized archive of the library, in whose creation many specialists worked for dozens of years, having been destroyed by a fire.

“Armenpress,” May 14, 2020 (www.armenpress.am)

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