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THE NEW LIBRARY - Rebuilding an Ancient Glory

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Bianca
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« Reply #75 on: May 06, 2009, 06:11:55 pm »










FROM THE ARCHIVES OF


SAUDIARAMCOWORLD:





                                                   Rebuilding an Ancient Glory






Written by
Jo Newson and
Larry Luxner

Where antiquity's greatest library once stood, a new world center of scholarship and research is rising, round as the moon...



Later this year, hard-hatted construction workers at a four-hectare (10-acre) site on Alexandria's hotel-studded Mediterranean coast will begin restoring the ancient world's greatest center of knowledge to its former glory.

For the workers themselves and for millions of Egyptians, the recreation of the 2300-year-old Alexandria Library has become a great source of national pride. it has been hailed by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as "a monument of civilization" which, like its ancient model, will "help strengthen the foundations of peace and promote friendship among peoples." It is the first large library to be designed and constructed with the help of the international community, the object of a massive fund-raising effort spearheaded by political and intellectual leader, including Mubarak, Kingh Hassan II of Morocco, Shaykh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, French President Francois Mitterand, Queen Sofia of Spain and Queen Noor of Jordan, former Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri, Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfouz, Octavio Paz and Wole Soyinka, and former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin.

Their goal: nothing less than the construction of a $171.5 million, fully computerized library and conference center near the site of its ancient counterpart, stocked with at least four million volumes and equipped with the latest in information technology and library science.

On its completion by the end of 1997, the Bibliotheca Alexandrian, as it is being called, will become one of the world's 20 biggest national repositories of books-along with the Moscow Library, the British Library and the Library of congress in Washington, D.C. Its ultimate capacity is eight million volumes, and it will include science and calligraphy museums and a music library as well.

"The great response of the community of nations in support of the Alexandria Library project has been overwhelming," said Mubarak whose government signed an agreement in 1990 with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Qrganization (UNESCO) to raise funds for the library, in much the same way that UNESCO helped to save Egypt's Abu Simbel and Philae monuments in the 1960's and 70's (See Aramco World, July-August 1976).
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