Attacks on Knowledge

Richard Ovenden, Keeper of the Bodleian Library, discusses the long history of the deliberate destruction of knowledge, and the social importance of preserving it, looking through the lens of libraries and archives as institutions established by society to support the preservation of and access to knowledge.

He will look across 5,000 years of history, and examine the current digital domains of knowledge and the ways in which control of society is increasingly exercised through control of knowledge in digital form.