Rosa created "Guardians of the Lost Library" at the request of Scandinavia-based, European Disney publisher Egmont in reference to the fact that Norway had officially declared 1993 to be "The Year of The Book" in order to promote reading[1] (as the story was published in Norway and Denmark in 1993, one year prior to its first edition in the original English).

Also the scoutmaster suspects, correctly, that Scrooge would use the information mainly to enrich himself, as he has recently done by acquiring the entire log books of the 16th century Spanish fleet to find lost treasures.

In Istanbul, modern-day Turkey, these "100,000 parchment scrolls" ("perhaps they left out the plays and poetry") once were "the light of the Dark Ages for 800 years" and had "the books from the great libraries of Islam" added to them over time.

Yet the contents survived, since for centuries the Orthodox monks had copied them into the modern technology of 10,000 manuscripts (with each hand-written book holding 10 original scrolls).

Apparently, Francisco Pizarro had it moved to his new capital, modern-day Lima, Peru in 1535, where beginning in 1551, the scholars at San Marcos University added "all the knowledge of the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Olmecs".

However, in the middle of the room stands a metal case, with the emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library our heroes first saw in Egypt: an Ibis symbolizing Thoth, the Egyptian deity of wisdom and writing.

An inscription on a metal plate by the last survivor of Drakeborough tells how he, on Drake's orders, had the library condensed into one single volume with every information no other surviving book in the world included.

Scrooge gets excited about how much money he saved on the fine he would have had to pay otherwise for 1,000,000 library scrolls each overdue for 2,000 years, and Donald complains about the noise drowning out the TV, muttering "Cripes!

The story contains at least one potential historical error: It apparently claims that Alexander the Great intended Alexandria to be the capital of his empire.

As the boyscouts walk down Killmotor Hill, along with some JWC pennants they carry a large, old volume with the Iris Emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library with them.

As the condensed book passed on by the last survivor of Drakeborough and found by Clinton Coot is the framework for the first edition of the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, in Rosa's later story The Lost Charts of Columbus (1995), the Junior Woodchucks intend to raise funds for excavations at the site of Cleopatra's hidden library in Egypt before it was brought to Byzantium.

So they organize a raffle and Gladstone Gander wins a fishing trip to Canada, where he recovers the Golden Helmet from Barks's eponymous story, allowing Azure Blue to resume his plans of owning North America.

Above-mentioned ancient Phoenician accounts of the Americas having inspired Lorenzo de Medici and Christopher Columbus in "Guardians of the Lost Library" are revisited in this story as well.