Saving the Burning Library
Every person carries knowledge. Some of it exists nowhere else. We help communities discover, document, and preserve that knowledge before it disappears.
Across generations, valuable knowledge lives inside people: how they built businesses, survived migration, practiced traditions, raised families, adapted to change, and shaped their communities. Much of it has never been written down. When the person carrying it is gone, that knowledge can disappear with them.
Our mission is to ensure that valuable human knowledge is not lost, but preserved, shared, and carried forward.
What is a Burning Library?
There is an African proverb often expressed as: “When an Elder Dies, A Library Burns to the Ground.”
We use the Burning Library as a way of describing valuable human knowledge that exists primarily inside people and communities, and is at risk of disappearing.
It may be the knowledge of an elder, migrant, craftsperson, shopkeeper, farmer, entrepreneur, parent, community leader, or ordinary person whose experience contains something worth carrying forward.
Our job is to find that knowledge before it disappears.
See the Burning Library in Action
Collection 001 — Porto San Pancrazio, Verona 2026–2027
Saving the Burning Library – La Memoria Viva di Verona
After more than a decade of research and documentation, Saving the Burning Library has entered a new phase: working directly with communities to preserve their living knowledge.
Our first collection is taking shape in Porto San Pancrazio, a neighborhood of Verona, Italy.
Through interviews with residents, documentary films, personal stories, and a growing Living Library, we are preserving experiences that reveal how a community has lived, worked, survived, and changed across generations.
From memories of the Second World War and postwar reconstruction to traditional skills, neighborhood businesses, and community relationships, these testimonies reveal knowledge that might otherwise disappear.
But preserving memory is only the beginning.
We are bringing these stories back to the community (15th December 2026) through documentary screenings, public conversations, and opportunities for younger generations to learn from those who came before them.
What We Preserve
Survival Logic
How people and communities endured, adapted, and carried knowledge through change.
Migration. Community memory. Traditions. Family knowledge. Neighborhood transformation. Cultural practices. Places, objects, and experiences that tell us how people lived and survived.
These experiences help future generations understand the challenges people faced, the decisions they made, and the knowledge that helped them continue.
Success Logic
How people learned to make things work.
Business practices. Trade knowledge. Skills. Decisions. Adaptation. Customer relationships. Mistakes. Resourcefulness.
These experiences reveal practical lessons that can help another generation understand how people built, worked, solved problems, and succeeded.
A human story can contain Survival Logic, Success Logic—or both.
Explore the Living Library
Every community has knowledge worth preserving. And every person can contribute to ensuring that this knowledge is not lost.
We invite schools, universities, cultural institutions, foundations, businesses, community organizations, and individuals to become part of this mission.
You can support the documentation of community memories, organize documentary screenings, contribute historical materials, participate in educational activities, or help bring the Living Library to more communities.
Together, we can turn individual memories into a shared resource for future generations.
Help Us Save the Burning Library
You can support the documentation of community memories, organize documentary screenings, contribute historical materials, participate in educational activities, or help bring the Living Library to more communities.
Together, we can turn individual memories into a shared resource for future generations.