From the Ancient Library of Alexandria to the World Wide Web

Abstract

The article attempts to show parallels between WWW and the Ancient Library of Alexandria. In its conceptual approach, WWW is very much influenced by the methods, organizational procedures and information management procedures that have been worked out and developed within the book culture. There is a striking similarity between WWW and the principal task to be performed by libraries, which is to preserve and protect as much of the mankind’s cultural heritage as possible, i.e., to collect the multitude of information data in substance and to make it available in one place in situ. Furthermore, the increment of information within the www space (i.e., the increase in the number of WWW pages) has ultimately led to a necessity of a creation of appropriate information technologies that would be capable of managing these digital objects. When some of these technologies were already in the making, some of their authors referred to the main idea that had motivated the creators of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, i.e., the idea of a creation of a full and extensive information repository. The present article discusses these technologies and indicates their conceptual similarities with the Alexandria Library.