[Sigia-l] Egypt launches a digital library accessible online

[Tim Salam]

[I'm passing this on from a local internet professionals list I'm on.
Thought it might be of interest]

By Sarah El Deeb, The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt - Alexandria's new library unveiled its first facility
Saturday - a digital library three times larger than the Library of
Congress.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a startling work of modern architecture in
Egypt's second biggest city, has not opened its doors yet, but members of
the public entered it Saturday by going to its website: www.bibalex.org.

Announcing the move, Bibliotheca director Ismail Serageldin told reporters
in Cairo the digital facility would give the world access to the library.

Referring to the Alexandria library of antiquity, Serageldin said: "It is
our intention that the library of Alexandria shall once more be a universal
library, but not in the old fashioned way of how many things we collect and
keep, but in how many things can we ensure are accessible to as many people
around the world as possible."

The digital library has four main components: a library of 10 billion web
pages since 1996; an archive of American movies going back to 1903; a
television archive of Egyptian and US networks; and a book-scanning facility
that will allow the library to scan its collection, which so far holds
200,000 books.

The web page library has the capacity to store a total of 100 million
megabytes or the equivalent of 100 million books.

"The Library of Congress, which is the current largest print library (in the
world), has 26 million volumes ... So (this collection) is larger in
quantity than the Library of Congress," said Brewster Kahle, the founder of
Internet Archive, a nonprofit corporation based in San Francisco,
California.

Kahle, who donated $5 million worth of computer software and hardware for
the web page facility, describes digitalized information as "the new
papyrus."

Serageldin said the process of going digital was a key to realizing the
library's vision of universal access. It would also permit "the preservation
of knowledge for future generation."

The Bibliotheca was due to open on April 23, but President Hosni Mubarak
postponed it indefinitely because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
saying a celebration was inappropriate.



Tim Salam
Vice President
Essemble IT Solutions
http://www.essemble.com