Message #144412

[Bianca]

In more ways than one, the new library will be far more public than the ancient one can ever have been. Electronic systems and scientific databases will allow researchers all over the library's wealth of material. While the original library's intention—to collect the writings of all nations—is now an impossibility, the storage of titles on various electronic media will give vast potential capacity to an international library with ambition to become, like its predecessor, universal. And the transfer of manuscripts onto optical disks will guarantee a more lasting conservation than scores of scribes, recopying works onto papyrus, leather and cloth, could have done in the past.

To make this design come true, Italian information consultant Giovanni Romerio was appointed project manager of the Alexandria Library and head of its executive secretariat in February 1992.

Romerio, who has worked with UNESCO since 1974, said his agency singed two contracts last October with Snøhetta and its Egyptian engineering partner Hamza Associates. The design phase of the project started on December 21, 1993, and should be completed by August 1995.

The remainder of the project is divided into three packages, Romerio said: excavation and foundation work, construction, and final-phase work such as air-conditioning, painting and furnishing. About 10 companies will be selected as subcontractors in a prequalification bidding on May 16 of this year, with actual work to begin in October and to finish by December 1997. "We plan to open in 1998, with a minimum of 50 employees, and then go up to 500 people," Romerio said.

As of January of this year, GOAL had raised some $65 million in contributions from the Arab world—including $23 million from Saude Arabia, $21 million from Iraq, $20 million from the UAE, and $1 million from Oman. Egypt's own contribution comprises the valuable site itself, and the $20 million conference center, already completed, to be associated with the new library. At the other end of the scale, a $1000 check recently arrived from tiny Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

"The situation has changed a lot just since the signing of the two contracts," Romerio said. "There is deepening Egyptian involvement in the project, and I think Western nations would like to participate as well, but they want to see a good start."

In fact, the Italian government has pledged $500,000 to fund the International School for information Studies that will be component of the new library. Both Belgium and the United Kingdom have also promised to support the Alexandria Library through scholarship and educational and scientific cooperation. And that's not all.

"Turkey has signed a protocol to give us copies of manuscripts and documents that date back to the Ottoman Empire and its relationship with Egypt," Mohsen Zahran said. "Greece will support the Hall of Fame at the library's entrance, where you will see busts of great scholars of the ancient library, primarily from Greece. Queen Sofia of Spain has promised to donate copies of books, documents and manuscripts that pertain to Arab culture in Spain. And President Mitterand has said he would instruct the French Ministry of Culture of Support the project with equipment and manuscripts.

"Our hopes are very high."






Jo Newson

is a free-lance writer and editor
specializing in architecture and design.
She was formerly editor of Mimar magazine.



Larry Luxner

is a free-lance journalist based
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a
frequent contributor to Aramco World.




This article appeared on pages 24-29 of the March/April 1994 print edition of Saudi Aramco