Massive blaze devastates Russian library housing unique documents, Ancient texts

'Massive blaze devastates Russian library housing unique documents, ancient texts ' Russia Today: January 31, 2015

One of Russia's largest academic libraries, which contains millions of unique historic documents, has gone up in flames in Moscow. A part of the building’s roof collapsed before dozens of fire fighters managed to contain the blaze. The fire erupted at around 10 pm local time [...] on the third floor of the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in Moscow. According to the Emergency Situations Ministry, some 2,000 square meters were engulfed in flames, prompting the roof to cave in. According to preliminary data, the cause of the fire could be a malfunction of the electrical system[...]  With 49,000 readers and 330 employees, INION is the largest research center in Russia in the fields of social sciences and humanities. Its collection consists of 14.2 million texts in both ancient and modern European and Asian languages, including rare 400-year-old editions.