By Robert F. Worth
NYTimes.com
March 1, 2003

SLIS Summary

The first library of Alexandria boasted that it had a copy of every known manuscript in the ancient world. This fantasy vanished, probably in a fire, more than a thousand years ago. But the dream of collecting all of the world's books has been revived online.

The directors of the new Alexandria Library have joined forces with an American artist and software engineers to make virtually all of the world's books available at a mouse click with a project known as the Alexandria Library Scholars Collective, run jointly with the Art Science Research Lab.

While many libraries already provide access to hundreds or even thousands of electronic books, the ambitions of the Alexandria Library appear to surpass those of its rivals. Its directors hope to link the world's other major digital archives and to make the books more accessible than ever with new software called CyberBook Plus.

According to supporters, the project could ultimately revolutionize learning in the developing countries, where libraries are often nonexistent and access to materials is hard to come by.

Still, the idea faces staggering logistical, legal and technical obstacles. Its success will depend on fundraising and forging links with governments and major universities that can offer access to their own books and materials. At the moment, the project is mainly funded through the library, supported by the Egyptian government and Unesco. Its American founder, Rhonda Roland Shearer, also raised seed money from several private philanthropists. She is seeking grants from foundations as well but has no commitments, she said.

The project's creators hope its philanthropic ideals and access to the Islamic world will help raise money. "When people are concerned about violence and fundamentalism, the library is a historical symbol of ecumenism and tolerance and rationality," said Ismail Serageldin, director of the Alexandria Library.

The venture may also be shadowed by some of the controversies that have plagued the entire library undertaking since it was first conceived. Critics have questioned its cost and whether its Enlightenment ideals can survive in a country where censorship is common.

Despite legally established administrative independence was established the library's paper collection is small and full of cast-off paperbacks.

The creators of the new database hope to make digital books and scholarly materials more accessible. Users will visit the Web site and see a sumptuously illustrated library that will link them to online texts much like a standard commercial browser. They will store their digital selections from the library's collection on shelves in an on-screen personal locker.

The library has scanned only about 100,000 pages of its own material, mostly medieval Arabic texts, said Serageldin. But it has embarked on a plan to digitize thousands of books over the next several years, most of them Arabic texts, with French and English translations, he continued. Other works are scheduled to be scanned elsewhere in Africa, including a whole library of crumbling medieval manuscripts in a monastery in Timbuktu in Mali.

The library will also have access to one million books that are now being scanned by Carnegie Mellon University, which is creating its own vast digital archive. The library has a vast trove of Web material already donated by the Internet Archive, a California partner with similar ambitions. The collective then plans to begin bargaining for access to digital collections at other libraries and universities around the world, offering access to its own materials and its network of scholars in exchange. Shearer hopes that private companies wanting access to its material will eventually join, helping build revenue for the nonprofit collective and the library.

Not everyone is thrilled by the thought of their works freely ricocheting around the world. Unlike some for-profit digital libraries that have sprung up in the last decade, the cooperative is, at least initially, interested mostly in books that are already out of copyright. In the meantime, the cooperative plans to begin urging authors to donate their digital rights in the hopes that the courts will let them be used.

Shearer said the library's large ambitions are an advantage. The current welter of different approaches to electronic books and resources is a problem for scholars, who will make use of the Web only if it can be made easy. The software was designed to allow use in different formats and languages, with a heavy emphasis on visuals rather than posted text.

Said Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, "One lesson of the original Library of Alexandria," he said, "is don't just have one copy."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/arts/01ALEX.html

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Posted March 04, 2003