Books!

[jamiebgall]

The most useful would be books. Certainly stone tablets would be more durable but less portable and unless you want to jot down some one line commandments the whole thing becomes unwieldy.

For a time after the apocalypse most of our knowledge will be unimportant. History, art and all but the most basic science will be frivolous luxuries. Keep the species history locked away somewhere dark and dry for when it can be useful again. Until then knowledge sharing will likely become more a cultural affair, passing from person to person like some of the societies in the world without books and electricity already do.

It would be fascinating to watch the way knowledge would likely be twisted into stories, then legends as we create our own parables for a new world.

[mahalonalo]

I agree, Jamie.
And the best way to hand down our spoken stories is through song. The brain remembers song.
Time should be set aside to sing the songs (like people do at Sunday services). This would require the creation of calendars which break time down into usable portions as we do now, so that people are reminded to sing the songs or repeat the stories regularly. Calendar-making will also encourage festivals to mark our memories and keep them fresh.

Maintaining knowledge of the science of fire-making and metallurgy will allow the writing of books on metal, and lead to the finding of magnets which will ease labor and enhance scientific exploration.

[Cyberkedi]

Books are definitely a good way to preserve knowledge since paper is light and fairly durable. The only problem is that certain kinds of paper tend to disintegrate. Really old books and documents have to be kept in climate-controlled storage so they don't fall apart. The Dead Sea Scrolls lasted as along as they did because they were in an arid climate and out of the sun, but even they were not in the best shape when discovered. Thus, we need to figure out how best to preserve books in order to maximize their lifespan. Sealing them in Mylar and then storing in a safe place is one way to make them last longer. Sealing each page in plastic would be time-consuming and costly, but this would probably preserve them for a long time while allowing people to read them.

Any other ideas?

[germanforestgump]

Hello Cyberkedi, i agree with you about the importance of books!
And i store about 8 cubic metres in my home.
The problem is to keep them dry and the mouses away

Libraries are threatened by several dangers:
Fire, water (even that to kill the fire), ground instabilities, war effects, insects, fungis, and public finance managers.

In Germany, we at last lost the Anna Amalia Library by Fire.
Some parts of contents from public libraries were damaged by River Floods.
In Cologne, the city archive breaks into the ground because of heavy mistakes while constructing an underground tube.
In Iraq and Syria, libraries were destroyed by bomb attacks.

But maybe the biggest danger is the digital revolution in combination with the economic starvation of the public communities:
Fewer and fewer citizens use the libraries because the use of internet is more comfortable;
and it will be more and more difficult for the education managers to defend the libraries before beeing closed by the finance managers.

Rescue your libraries!
Found a local commitee to prevent your librariy before beeing closed!
Collect to finance fire and water protect!
Identify the most important books and organize a secure storaging in case of library damage!

[Strongbow]

What about a book vault? Like the seed vault. Something in a constructed bunker style enclosure.

https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/fo ... /id462220/

Maybe have multiple ones?

[germanforestgump]

The senate of Leibnitz Insitutes suggest the German Federal Governments to cancel the financial support for the
Central Library of Life Sciences ZB Med.
The result of evaluation was that the quality do not fit to modern challenges.
The employees, of course, argue vehement against this, with good arguments:

http://www.zbmed.de/en/about/press/late ... -research/

I miss one point:
A traditional library with books and print media may be a back-up in case of the total breakdown of any electronic and digital communication.
A rich country like Germany should not be able to finance a traditional life-science library?
It would be ridicoulus, shameful and barbaric to cancel this institution!

There is a petition to save it:

https://www.change.org/p/keepzbmed#delivered-to