World Leaders Attend Opening
of Egypt’s Alexandrian Library
Dignitaries from around the world gathered in Egypt for the October 17 opening of the $230-million Biblioteca Alexandrina, envisioned as a modern counterpart to the ancient Alexandrian Library.
“Egypt has exerted all efforts to make the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina a civilized message in its roots, modern in its content, and international in its role and reach,” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told French President Jacques Chirac, Greek President Costis Stephanopoulos, Spain’s Queen Sofia, and some 300 other world figures, the New York Times reported October 16.
Although the 11-story, 31,000-square-foot facility has a 4-million-book capacity, it currently houses only 240,000 volumes, many of them donated. Library Director Ismail Serageldin said the original plan for eight million books was shelved in favor of creating a state-of-the-art cyberlibrary, Reuters reported October 15. “How many books you have is not that relevant,” maintained Serageldin. “The issue of being at the forefront of building an electronic library becomes more relevant, and that’s one of the reasons why we want to jump forward in the electronic realm.”
Egypt paid more than half of the project’s cost. A fundraising drive backed by UNESCO raised about $65 million, and European countries and companies contributed $33 million, the Times reported.
The inaugural ceremony, originally scheduled for April 23, was delayed in the wake of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Posted October 21, 2002.
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