Digital librarianship—the digitization, collection, and cataloguing of texts—was one of the earliest uses of networked computers. By most accounts, the first digital library was Project Gutenberg, which began making public domain works available in 1971 via the Arpanet, the ...
Probably a representation of the legend of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, when many ancient works were presumed lost forever.
More images: https://www.qwant.com/?client=ext-firefox-sb&q=library+of+alexandria+burning&t=images&origin=suggest
Oh good catch!