The Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Not long ago I was in Alexandria, Egypt, where I visited the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern successor to the ancient world’s Great Library. It is a remarkable structure, a huge discus slanted at an angle, facing the Mediterranean. The Rough Guide to Egypt informed me that “the library was controversial even before its inauguration in 2002 (when an exhibition of books from every nation featured the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Israel’s entry).”
This struck me as plausible; some Mubarak regime functionary a decade ago taking a meaningless cheap shot to cover up for its actual collaboration with Israel to suppress Palestinians and its massive economic and social failures in Egypt itself.
But what about the Alexandria Library today? Are its collections biased? I entered, passing hundreds of Egyptian university students doing their homework, and climbed up the slanted stairways toward the shelves that housed the History of the Middle East.
I found books in Arabic, English, French and other languages. I found pro-Israel books, by people like Barry Rubin and Walter Laqueur. And I found Six Days of War, the tendentious history of the 1967 conflict, by none other than Michael Oren, Israel’s present ambassador to the United States.
when an exhibition of books from every nation featured the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Israel’s entry
Where else would the Protocols come from? Russia? France? The Czech Republic? The organisers of the conference obviously supported the thesis that Jews are indigenous to Palestine. Bloody Zionist sympathisers.
Anything interesting in the Egypt section?
You might say this is off-topic but my reaction is a bit different. Isn’t really sad, or pitiable, or laughable (depending on your sympathies) that the Egyptians and their donors spent a colossal fortune on that building just a couple years before the advent of Google Books?
Here in the U.S. our universities are shuttering or repurposing physical libraries because the students and, increasingly, the faculty find it’s not really necessary in the contemporary digital age to go to them. You can sit at home in your pajamas and research all or most of whatever topic you’re interested in.
And that makes the physical restoration of the Alexandria Library seem like one of those breakthru technologies that arrive just before they’re swamped by some more popular technology (betamax, high-def DVD, etc.)
On a more related note it really doesn’t matter what books the Egyptian authorities (or anyone else) put in the libraries today because so much information is available on the internet. You can’t conceal anything anymore–unless you abrogate or control access to the internet.
Fascinating structure mostly naturally lit by sunlight through all these roof openings seen in the picture above. Prior to its opening, the Telegraph in 2001 wrote:
“The new oval building, designed by a Norwegian architect, has been widely hailed as a masterpiece. Its marble walls, inscribed with the alphabets of known and forgotten languages, sweep out majestically over the Mediterranean shoreline. Papyrus, the ancient source of paper for the old library, grows in a moat that surrounds the circular building.
The interior offers some of the most expansive research and reading space in the world. But even as the library, whose predecessor was built in the 3rd century BC and used by Euclid and Archimedes, is reopened alongside the ancient site, there are growing concerns that Egypt’s academic pretensions are threatened by censorship.
Under mounting pressure from Islamists, President Mubarak has urged government officials to press ahead with a strict censorship regime against works deemed offensive to Islam. Bookshops, book fairs and public libraries are frequently raided by government censors.”
The Alexandria University library collection of about 700,000 books is relatively small. It also has a section for the blind. It has Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” but under lock and key. The library’s million square feet include a science and conference center with a planetarium seen in the corner of the photo. Great architecture and great accoustics control.
Gellian, the library and science center have hundreds of computers. You have to remember that most of Alexandria’s students don’t have computers. The library, its computers and the Planetarium are mobbed by thousands of students of all ages every day that use them. The planetarium was closed for maintenance on the day I was there 3 years ago. Your gloating is out of place.
For photos of the interior:
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Africa/Egypt/Muhafazat_al_Iskandariyah/Alexandria-2009064/Things_To_Do-Alexandria-new_Library_of_Alexandria-BR-1.html
I had great replies lined up to all of you, ready to zing you all each in turn.
Then the internet access at the cafe I was killing time at blipped and I lost them all.
So I suppose that’s the best reply I can make, though not the one I’d planned.
The Internet has reached a point where it is a threat to the establishment. The influence of the Internet has reached critical mass and more than ever these guys want to police it. Even if intelligence agencies had a hand in helping to provoke protests, they certainly didn’t act as guides thanks to the Internet allowing for the people to take control of them. Ron Paul is proof that traditional MSM outlets are losing influence, especially in the under 45 crowd. Now it’s hitting home where it hurts the most and they are panicking.
SOPA today and bill to fight ‘internet terrorism’ (hackers like anonymous) tomorrow. Not cause they care about IPs or anonymous, because they want to control the internet. I’m personally not even concerned about whether SOPA passes or not. These politicians have absolutely no idea what they are asking for or how DNS and the Internet in general even works. They are asking for the impossible. I wouldn’t worry about any bills to police the internet because it can’t be policed. You can work around everything.
IMO, that library is a new-age library full of books that condition people to the status quo. The Internet has shown be factual and reliable sources that Israeli history is invented (seriously, that’s not a pun on Newt). Probably all history is invented by the victor of war. We don’t know anything. Ironically, it was the library in Alexandria of antiquity that was burned and history was destroyed.