Online Library Wants It All ...

[Dave Monroe]

The New York Times
Saturday, March 1, 2003
Online Library Wants It All, Every Book
By ROBERT F. WORTH
 
The legendary library of Alexandria boasted that it
had a copy of virtually every known manuscript in the
ancient world. This bibliophile's fantasy in Egypt's
largest port city vanished, probably in a fire, more
than a thousand years ago. But the dream of collecting
every one of the world's books has been revived in a
new arena: online.

The directors of the new Alexandria Library, which
christened a steel and glass structure with 250,000
books in October, have joined forces with an American
artist and software engineers in an ambitious effort
to make virtually all of the world's books available
at a mouse click. Much as the ancient library nurtured
Archimedes and Euclid, the new Web venture also hopes
to connect scholars and students around the world.

... Its directors hope to link the world's other major
digital archives and to make the books more accessible
than ever with new software.

To its supporters, the project, called the Alexandria
Library Scholars Collective, 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: copyright infringement, high
costs and language barriers, to name just a few. Its
success will depend on its ability to raise money from
foundations and to forge links with governments and
major universities that can offer access to their own
books and materials. At the moment, the project is
paid for mainly by the library, which is supported by
the Egyptian government and Unesco....

[...]

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.

But the Internet venture may also be shadowed by some
of the controversies that have plagued the entire
library undertaking since it was first conceived three
decades ago. Critics have often questioned its cost
and asked whether its Enlightenment ideals can survive
in a country where censorship is common. And a
contribution from Saddam Hussein before the Persian
Gulf war has also raised eyebrows.

[...]

... Users of the Alexandria software will visit the
Web site and see a sumptuously illustrated library,
with calling cards and stacks, 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 software also includes colorful virtual
auditoriums, classrooms and offices with lamps where
scholars can exchange information, teach classes or
hold office hours. The rooms and lecture halls can
easily be customized for the universities that choose
to use the library's software for remote learning ... 

[...]

The library has scanned only about 100,000 pages of
its own material, mostly medieval Arabic texts, Mr.
Serageldin said. 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 said. 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, Mr. Serageldin said.

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 and is one of Alexandria's partners. And the
library has a vast trove of Web material already
donated by the Internet Archive, a California partner
with similar universal 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.

[...]

Not everyone is thrilled by the thought of their works
ricocheting around the world free. In the United
States, publishers have begun to find ways to seal off
access to their copyrighted works. But unlike some
for-profit digital libraries that have sprung up in
the last decade, the cooperative is 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.

Another possible obstacle may arise from the sheer
breadth of the project's goals: digital library,
lecture hall, international scholars' hub, gateway for
ordinary readers and new software package....

But Ms. Shearer says the library's large ambitions are
also 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 she
developed, called CyberBook Plus, was designed to
allow its use in different formats and languages, with
a heavy emphasis on visuals rather than posted text.

And putting everything in one place is no longer as
risky as it was in the predigital era, 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."

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

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/