British Library Declines Taliban Archive, New Hosts Step Up

The British Library (BL) has turned down a large archive of Taliban-related material due to issues of copyright compliance and concerns on the library’s part that, by hosting the collection, it could be in violation of counter-terrorism laws. On August 28 the BL released a statement explaining that it would neither acquire nor provide access to the digital archive of materials from the Taliban Sources Project (TSP). The collection includes more than 1,000 newspapers and magazines published between 1996–2001, when the Taliban was the ruling power in Afghanistan, as well as volumes of Sharia law and edicts, military documents, maps, transcripts of radio broadcasts, poetry written by Taliban soldiers, and video and audiotapes.