An ancient library lost to posterity is found?

In a story that is exciting to a history geek such as myself, the Sunday Times (of London) reports that a lost Roman library of Herculaneum may still exist under a layer of volcanic soot and rock from Mount Vesuvius. From the article:

All knowledge of the great house was lost until 1738, when workmen sinking a well shaft encountered a mosaic floor. It was too deep to excavate; instead, over the next 20 years under the supervision of Karl Weber, a Swiss military engineer, a network of tunnels was hewn through the debris clogging the great peristyle, the atrium and the Olympic-sized swimming pool. Cartloads of treasures were brought to the surface, destined for the art collection of the King of Naples.

Throughout this time, mingled with the sculptures and glassware, workmen retrieved what looked like lumps of coal which they unthinkingly dumped in the sea. It was not until 1752 and the discovery of an intact library lined with 1,800 rolls of papyrus, that the excavators realised that what they had been throwing away were carbonised books. The site has since been known as the Villa of the Papyri.

While the rolls of papyrus were unreadable due to the carbonization, modern technology, namely multi-spectral imaging, allows for us to see the words long lost to antiquity:

Booras’s tool was a digital camera sensitive to a far wider spectrum of light and which could range deep into infra-red wavelengths.

When he and his wife Susan, a fellow researcher, applied a filter that allowed only infrared light of 900-950 nanometres into the camera, the long-lost texts reappeared.

The ink had apparently retained a characteristic that made it absorb infrared light differently from the surrounding burnt papyrus.

The events of history have left huge gaps in Western knowledge. The burning of the library at Alexandria was a terrible tragedy for human knowledge. In this case, tragedy has preserved texts that otherwise would have detoriated by now, and modern technology allows us to read texts that possibly have not been read in 2000 years. May the Herculaneum society be successful in efforts to find a second library on the site.