From the University Librarian: The Library at Alexandria: History as Future

I imagine that there are few bibliophiles who haven't perused some of the hundreds of works on the subject of books, libraries and reading. In many of these works one learns about the creation and ultimate destruction of the fabled ancient Library at Alexandria. By most accounts, the Great Library-actually two entities, considered "mother" and "daughter" libraries-was constructed under the rule of Ptolemy I around 300 B.C.E., some thirty years after Alexander of Macedon had founded the city.

It was the intent of the Library's creators to amass, in essence, the entire corpus of recorded knowledge. Therefore scrolls and manuscripts were purchased, borrowed, or even appropriated and copied-in some cases with the copies, not the originals, returned to the owners. We decry that particular deception, but also appreciate that the Alexandrians wanted multiple copies of works, reflecting provenance as well as alternative versions. This perhaps was the first example of the recognition that variant editions are important in the history of scholarship. Libraries in their preservation of the written artifact were actually also codifying intellectual thought for the future.

What we know of the size, shape, and contents of that Great Library comes from an ancient secondary, not primary, source: a copy made by Diodorus of Sicily of the "History of Egypt" by Hecataeus of Abdera, who had written that above the entrance to the Library was the phrase "The Place of the Cure of the Soul." (This phrase is sometimes translated as "the hospital for the soul" or even "the healing-place of the soul.") For many of us, today's libraries continue to fulfill the peaceful and restorative function exemplified by the phrase.

Historians disagree on exactly how and when in the ancient world the Library at Alexandria was destroyed. But owing to years of effort of UNESCO and a multinational force of scholars, politicians and friends of libraries, a new Great Library at Alexandria has been constructed. In October 2002 the Bibliotheca Alexandrina opened at a site near the presumed location of its ancient predecessor. According to the new Library's director, "the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is to be the window of the world on Egypt; the window of Egypt on the world; an instrument for rising to the digital challenge; a center for dialogue between peoples and civilizations."

Its goals are lofty and its ambitions worthy, particularly in the hope that the creation of a new center for learning and culture will revivify a city that had been eclipsed by others. Like many projects which require vast sums of money, there are both appreciators and detractors of the effort to recreate a library that plans to acquire, over time, millions of volumes-particularly when the digital era demands consideration of new forms of scholarly communication.

But that very scholarly communication in digital format is problematic in today's environments. At issue are intellectual property rights and fair use for educational purposes; the high cost of access to digital back files, particularly when the information emanates from the commercial sector; the viability and affordability of digital preservation; and the willingness "for legal reasons" of some publishers to eradicate articles-deemed flawed in logic or produced through some misconduct-from their online databases. This last issue is particularly complicated because the print version of an article can be removed only physically, while the digital one is gone with a keystroke. Which version, print or digital, becomes the definitive publication? As importantly, what happens to the history of scholarship in a given discipline if a digital article disappears?

The preservation of today's "born digital" information is at least as important as for print materials, and librarians and technologists are toiling with all due speed to develop standards to assure permanence for the future. Even as it opened its reading rooms, stacks, and multimedia facilities to the public, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina became one of the world's three repositories of the "Wayback Archive"-a digital archive of the billions of pages of the World Wide Web from 1996 to the present-created by computer innovator Brewster Kahle. Why Alexandria? I'd like to think it's because of the symbolism that a new physical library, created to resurrect metaphorically the glories of its history, is very much aware of its own, and the world's, information future.

At the start of the third millennium, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina returns to Egypt and to the world the vision of that first Great Library: to conserve the past while preparing for the future; to support scholarship; and to foster intercultural understanding. As we look forward to proliferated information through digital means, we can remember also the library as a haven; a place to "cure the soul."