Library of Congress team visits National Library of Iraq

And comes up with some interesting findings:

What was burnt in the old library was primarily archives. After questioning the librarians repeatedly, it became clear that the archives that were burnt were those that covered what they called "al-`ahd al-jumhuri" or the Republican era, which according to them included the archives from 1977 to the present. Other archives, such as those brought in from the Ministry of Interior two months before the war, and covering the period 1920 to 1977, lay unharmed in rice bags in rooms close to those in which the republican archives had been burnt to ashes.

The fact that the republican archives were burnt to ashes led the team to conclude that some kind of highly incendiary device had been used that would not likely have been found in the hands of random looters. Others, such as Jean-Marie Arnoult of the second UNESCO team that visited Iraq in June-July noted that "the fire [in the library] was well organized", and Nabil Takriti, a graduate student at the University of Chicago who visited libraries and other centers in May, remarked on the use of incendiary materials as well.