Inside Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Bibliotheca Alexandrina is not only a library. It is a place for creativity, cultural dialogue and tolerance. It is a platform for the imagination of the human mind and simple a temple for knowledge.

The BA has an area of 40,200 square meters composed of 11 levels. The Library's main reading area can accommodate up to 2000 users and contains 200 study rooms equipped with computers. The library has a total possession of 500,000 volumes and books but can accomodate up to 4 million. The complex receives more than 800,000 visitors per year and hosts 500 events annually.

One of the main striking features of the BA is its collection of Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, founded by Brewster Kahle of the United States, has donated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) a gift valued at US$ 5 million. This donation includes:

10 billion web pages from 1996-2001.
2000 hours of Egyptian and US television broadcast.
1000 archival films.
100 terabytes of data (100,000,000,000,000 characters) stored on 200 computers.
A Book scanning facility for scanning local books

The purpose of the IA, a complete copy of which is now in Alexandria, is to include the main part of the World Wide Web collection. It is a complete snapshot of all web pages on every website since 1996. Since the web changes, this snapshot is retaken every two months. The resulting collection is 10 billion web pages. All in all, this collection has three times more text pages than in all the books of the largest print library: the Library of Congress (LOC). These are not the same pages of the books in the LOC, but it gives a sense of the enormous scale of the IA. Over 10 billion web pages from over 16 million different sites, this represents the voices of millions of writers over the last 5 years.

The BA is involved in some magnificant projects that really need to be highlighted. I have selected only a few of them:

1- Espresso Book Machine: The main objective of this project is to design and implement an innovative business model for the e-book supply chain for Arabic books and to test the standards and protocols through building a prototype of Print-On-Demand (POD). The machine is currently installed at the BA premises, and is of equivalent functionality to the unit currently installed at the World Bank InfoShop in Washington, DC. This is a beta machine that is capable of printing and binding books up to 500 pages in 20 minutes. It is intended for experimenting the implementation of a new business model with publishers using Print-On-Demand system inside the library, where Bibliotheca Alexandrina will act as a retailer. The software of the machine has been adapted to deal with Arabic books and Arabic metadata. The software is built upon open source platform where all our modifications and additions are shared with On Demand Books LLC through Concurrent Versions System (CVS).

2- Million Book Initiative:

Initiated by Carnegie Mellon University, the primary long-term objective is to transfer all books into digital format, in partnerships with other scanning centers internationally, in order to create a Universal Digital Library (UDL), which will foster creativity and free access to all knowledge. The Million Book Project's main aim is to make a large knowledge base widely accessible by providing access to subscriptions through remote sites using Digital Right Management (DRM) to permit the swap of its digital contents. The project also aims at providing a test-bed supporting research on improved scanning techniques, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), intelligent indexing, machine translation, and information retrieval.

BA and its partners (including China, India and USA) have been working to demonstrate the project’s feasibility by digitizing one million books within three years and publishing them as a searchable collection on the Internet. All partners will contribute content to ensure that the collection is extensive, diverse and multilingual. The collection of the first digitized million books will be reached by swapping the digitized books produced by the different partners. This method not only allows for sharing the resources of different countries and dividing the work among them, but also has the desirable feature of having each partner holding a mirror site of the million digitized books locally, thus guaranteeing fast access, reliability and availability.

BA is taking the lead in scanning and digitizing 75,000 Arabic books in a three-year time frame. By 22/11/2006, over 26.732 books were digitized and processed (8.3+ million pages). These included approximately 22,085 Arabic books, and 4,647 Latin books. In addition to this, 21,468 books were OCRed (6.6+ million pages). These included approximately 16,834 Arabic books, and 4,631 Latin books. Around 27,063 images were scanned, and 20,942 were processed. The digitization rate is gradually increasing to meet the target of scanning and processing 5,000 pages/day/scanner (2 shifts), which will lead to approximately 25,000 books/year.

3- Digital Assets Repository: The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is a system developed by ISIS to create and maintain the Library digital collections. DAR acts as a repository for all types of digital material (obtained from the Library or acquired from other sources), preserving and archiving digital media, and providing public access to digitized collections through web-based search and browsing facilities. Website: http://dar.bibalex.org

4- Digitization of Description de l’Egypte:

Description de l'Egypte was the outcome of the collaboration of more than 150 prominent scholars and scientists who accompanied Napoleon in 1798, and some 2000 talented artists and technicians. For over 20 years, they systematically examined almost every aspect of contemporary and ancient Egyptian civilization, producing 20 volumes of text and plates of unmatched accuracy and detail. Historically, these engravings became the most comprehensive record and inventory of Egypt’s land and monuments. This valuable collection containing images related to antiquities, natural history, and the modern states of Egypt has been fully digitized and integrated on a virtual browser with the objective of preserving it and making it publicly accessible. The collection includes eleven volumes of plates owned by BA, as well as ten volumes of text, a contribution from Institut d’Egypte.

The first stage was completed in October 2004 where the application was provided on DVD in high resolution with French and English interfaces. The relation between the text volumes and the plate volumes were established and rendered in a searchable form.

In April 2007, the second stage was completed, developing a web version to introduce the entire collection online in an integrated searchable form. The web version provides enhanced functionalities such as full search on the text volumes with highlights, zooming on all pages of the book, a favorites list, and sharing data with friends. Two special features distinguish the new website, namely allowing users to view pages in high resolution without the need for a high speed connection, and full text morphological search with highlights for the book’s 9000 pages.

Website:http://descegy.bibalex.org

5- Arab InfoMall Database and Website: The Arab InfoMall emulates a mall or center for non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) and civil society organizations (CSOs) in a tri-lingual (Arabic, English, French) web portal. Each organization is presented as a kiosk/boutique inside the mall. The InfoMall will provide a web access point through which Egyptian and Arab NGOs can both present their activities and observe what others are doing at the national and regional levels. The exchange will allow them to actively participate in published reform activities and will pave the way to creating stronger and more fruitful partnerships.

Website: http://arabinfomall.bibalex.org

6- Gamal Abdel Nasser Digital Archive: In cooperation with the Nasser Foundation, BA has digitized the collection of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and published it through an integrated searchable web-based system, which is mainly intended for research and documentation purposes. The entire digital archive is freely available at http://nasser.bibalex.organd has been receiving an average of 1.5 million hits per month.

7- The Development Gateway: The Development Gateway is an interactive portal for information and knowledge sharing on sustainable development and poverty reduction. The Gateway offers users access to the most comprehensive database of development projects, an international procurement marketplace and knowledge sharing on key development topics.

On 11 March 2006, an agreement was signed between Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Development Gateway Foundation. According to the agreement the BA will collaborate on this project in three phases:

Take ownership of the main Gateway site in Arabic and be responsible for Arabic translation, similar to the current functionality of the Gateway Spanish and French version.
Ccreate and maintain an Arabic-language Community “Arab Reform”. The “Arab Reform” Community will be a pan-Arabic portal containing key resources relevant to a broad spectrum of social and economic reforms currently underway in the Arabic world. In particular, resources related to the governance sector will include human rights, freedom of expression, and rule of law; in economic reform to youth employment, poverty, trade, and regional and international integration with the world economy; in social reforms to family education, health, and the removal of all forms of discrimination against women; and in cultural reforms to religious discourse as much as to public, media discourse, and the promotion of research and scientific thinking.
Design, develop and host the Egypt Country Gateway in Arabic similar to the China Country Gateway. Country Gateways are locally owned and operated initiatives, which explore the use of information and communication technologies for development in their countries. By participating in and launching diverse online and offline initiatives, they enhance transparency, efficiency, dynamism and sustainability of the development process in their countries.

In summary, a truely remarkable institution.