A modern library of Alexandria

NET REULTS A new library in the ancient Egyptian city integrates the past with the latest technologies, writes Karlin Lillington

THE LIBRARY of Alexandria was one of the wonders of the ancient world (even if it is not on the official list of seven ancient wonders - though the nearby Lighthouse of Alexandria does figure).

The city itself spanned three successive civilisations - Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine - after being established as Alexander the Great's capital city 2,300 years ago and developed into a centre of culture and learning by the Ptolemies.

Ptolemy I decided to develop the library in 288 BC, and it went far beyond being a storage place for manuscripts and papyri. It was a research and study centre, an academy and a library, and it drew scholars - scientists, mathematicians, astronomers and writers - from across the ancient world.

The library was open to people of all cultures, and to both men and women, boys and girls. It was destroyed - with a loss of thousands of priceless manuscripts - gradually over several hundred years, but its legendary status has survived the millennia.

Now, in an effort to create a library of libraries once again in Alexandria, Egypt has built a most extraordinary complex and is determined to open its doors - physical and virtual - to the world.

Last week, the delightful director of the four-year-old Bibliotecha Alexandrina, Ismail Serageldin, brought the ancient and modern libraries to life in a fascinating lecture at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.

His description of the ancient library was riveting, and I enjoyed his argument that Cleopatra, far from being the languid airhead sexpot of silver-screen portrayals, was a brainy gal who loved a good library when she saw one.

Noting that the Queen of the Nile was actually Cleopatra the Seventh ("but no one cares about the other six"), Serageldin said her famed lover Marc Anthony offered her a gift of 200,000 scrolls to make up for a fire in the library that erupted during one of Julius Caesar's battles. Not your typical romantic gift, noted Serageldin; few men come offering thousands of books when they say "I love you".

On the library of today - an astonishing architectural design of a giant disk like a sundial tilted on its side - Serageldin said one million people visited the library and its complex of research and study centres a year.

Some 2,000 readers can use the library at the same time.

Serageldin is especially fond of the special programmes for children, who are the sole visitors for the first two hours of the morning.

There is a children's library, a library for teens, a multimedia centre, a Nobel section for scholars and researchers, a centre for the visually impaired, a calligraphy centre, a manuscript centre and more. And there is a cluster of museums: of antiquities, of manuscripts, of science. There is even a dialogue centre for intellectual discussions.

What's especially exciting is how the library is embracing digital technologies to make its collections widely available - across the world, online and to those with visual impairments.

Computers are at the centre of the library, whether in the reading rooms for researchers, or for accessing the collection and digitised manuscripts from abroad.

The library is active in a project to digitise its out-of-print books and has found a way to work around copyright issues by charging a token amount to get a copy of books that still fall under the ever-advancing periods of copyright granted even to obscure books by deceased authors.

The library is also the only duplicate site for the Californian Internet Archive project, and every few months stores an image of every single page on the world wide web.

Serageldin said the library was dedicated to the ancient library's principles of advancing knowledge while remaining culturally and intellectually open and progressive, encouraging dialogue and discussion.

It was clear he felt a particular urgency in that mission, given the library's base in an Islamic urban centre at a time when fundamentalism has a high profile; many of the library's facilities focus on Islamic scholarship and encouraging dialogue among Arab cultures, and it is the home of the secretariat of the Arab National Commissions for Unesco.

Much of the funding for the project comes from the Egyptian government but the library is also supported by international contributions and generates some of its own budget. Serageldin pointed out that the library benefits from the low wage costs in Egypt - a computer engineer earns only $300 (€192) a month on average, he said.

The library's goal is to have the majority of its funding eventually coming from non-governmental sources to ensure it will always be free and independent and not subject to the whims of any future government.

You can visit the library yourself at www.bibalex.org.

klillington@irish-times.ie

blog: www.techno-culture.com