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Noted intellectual and social advocate Ismail Serageldin believes he has found his calling as director of the historic Library of Alexandria.迷你倉 By Kenneth JamesISMAIL SERAGELDIN'S personal credo is displayed prominently on his website: "Non-violence is my creed ... Engagement, rationality, tolerance, dialogue, learning and understanding are my means ..." That doctrine of engagement has brought him to Singapore, a featured speaker at the second International Summit of the Book. But in a hammer-blow to this avowed man of peace, back home, his native Egypt is wracked by dissension, turmoil and violence in the streets.It is a turn of events that has made him "very sad", Dr Serageldin admits."We decry all the loss of life, we decry the violence. We ask all people to listen to the better angels of their nature and to go back to discussions and, I hope, reconciliation," he tells BT in the course of an engrossing Raffles Conversation that stretches well beyond the allotted one hour.Dr Serageldin is the director of the historic Library of Alexandria, or Bibliotheca Alexandrina. And he points out: "The Library of Alexandria has been, from the beginning of the Revolution till now, protected by the people. It is a building that has no walls, no gates, whose doors are in glass. I regret to say that in the last incidents, we had a few panes of glass broken by stray bullets, and a few policemen have been hurt. But fundamentally the building itself, the Library, has not been attacked by anybody."There's been a wide love and respect because it is a non-partisan institution that still stands for values like openness and dialogue. And we hope that these values will prevail."Those values, he points out, were established an amazing 2,300 years ago, when this great monument to learning and knowledge was first created.The Librarian of Alexandria - a title that stretches back to that period of antiquity - explains: "The Ancient Library of Alexandria was in some ways the greatest adventure of the human intellect in history. The starting point, around 288 BC, was to bring 100 of the greatest minds - poets, mathematicians, geographers, literary figures, historians, et cetera. They were given a space in what was then known as the Musaeum in Latin, which was a temple to the Muses; the Muses being the goddesses of knowledge and arts. They had residential quarters, and space in the temple to discuss among themselves. And to that was attached the botanical gardens - very unusual in those days. Plus a library."And the library grew and grew and grew, and dominated the whole complex. But it was a complex that was part academy, part research centre, part university, a teaching place. Teaching girls, mind you; girls' education flourished in the ancient Library. And it went on to produce an explosion of knowledge unmatched anywhere in the world."The examples flow: "It was there that Aristarchus was the first person to show, in the 3rd century BC, that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around; Eratosthenes, my predecessor, the third director of the library, calculated the circumference of the earth to 98.5 per cent accuracy; Herophylus identified the brain as the controlling organ of the body, not the heart as Aristotle had said; and Hipparchus calculated the length of the solar year, 365 1/4 days, to within 6 1/2 minutes."To which I would add the single greatest achievement (over) the term of our full-time resident scholars, Euclid, who wrote Euclidean geometry which was the only scientific text largely unchanged for 2,200 years. And many others who were part of that enormous (legacy)."And the librarian in him cannot resist relating this slice of history:"In the period of Eratosthenes, there was a great poet by the name of Callimachus. My predecessor told him, writing poetry is something you can do in your own time; do something useful, go and write a catalogue for the library."And it was the first time ever that universal knowledge was organised by subject, and then by author within subject, and then alphabetically by author. So Callimachus became the father of library science; or if you like, the father of bibliography - we still write bibliographies the same way as he did then!"His catalogue was 120 volumes long, a huge catalogue for the ancient Library. They were copied, and recopied - and as a result, we know how much we lost (when the Library was destroyed in the 3rd and 4th century)."For example, he mentioned that Euripedes had 106 plays of which only 18 survived. Sophocles had 100 plays of which only seven or eight survived. It's like saying there's this guy William Shakespeare, and we have these two plays here, but we understand he also wrote something called Hamlet, something called Macbeth, something called Othello, and we just don't know where they are."And so when we say we lost a lot, part of the reason we know how much we lost was this catalogue. We librarians owe him a lot, Callimachus."The idea of reviving the ancient library was mooted in 1974 and came to fruition around the turn of this century. Dr Serageldin, then a vice-president of the World Bank, active advocate for socio-economic development and a noted intellectual in his own right, was invited to head, and shape, the ambitious cultural project."That is something you don't turn down," he declares. "I mean, it's a once in a lifetime occasion, to be given the opportunity to take on the task of recapturing the spirit, recreating the Library of Alexandria, in almost exactly the same location. And so I agreed to go there."I resigned all my positions. I was a vice-president of the World Bank, head of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), chairman of the Global Water Partnership, head of CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest, a microfinance programme). And all my government positions. I resigned all that. This, to recreate the ancient Library of Alexandria, using tools of the 21st century to recapture that spirit."And I'm happy to say, today the new library is much more than a library. This year, we have seven specialised libraries, 14 research centres, 19 museums and art galleries, a planetarium, a huge conference facility. We have the only (mirror) copy of the Internet Archive, a large Informatics centre, our own supercomputer,"And we are very much open, we have a space of freedom. We are non-partisan but we stand for values - of pluralism, freedom of expression, of tolerance, dialogue, learning and understanding."So I'm happy to say, yes, we have the Library of Alexandria, same business, same place."He quips, laughing heartily, "We just had a brief hiatus of 1,600 years, we were kind of closed for repairs!"But you know, in the scale of Egypt, that is not too long. After all, this is a land whose history stretches for almost 7,000 years."What about censorship? He replies: "We have open Internet access in the library, 3,000 computers, 400 of them are available for visitors, which they can use to access anything they want. Th文件倉 only two things that I filter are pornography and gambling sites. But political opinion (sites) et cetera are available."When we opened the Library in 2002, the big issue was the Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie. (I was asked) 'How can you possibly have a book like Satanic Verses?'. I said, 'Not only can I have it, I do have it. Go and look it up, it's available.'"When I said that, of course (some) Islamists immediately took me to task, 'How can he have such an offensive book', 'You are a responsible person, you yourself are a Muslim', and so on."I said, 'Let's assume you want to rebut it.' 'Yes, I do want to rebut it.' 'Very good. Where would you go to get a copy? You come to me, I'll give you a cubicle, you can sit down, I'll loan you the book, you write your rebuttal. When your rebuttal is published, I will take your rebuttal and put it in the library.'"Unusual life careerHis appointment comes at the apex of what he describes as "a very unusual life career". Graduating with First Class Honours in engineering from Cairo University, he went on to Harvard University for a Master's and PhD in regional planning and economics."I remember telling my professor at that time, 'Everything we're learning in economics is wrong. Development is about human resources'. So I took courses in the School of Education and I wrote my thesis on the contribution of education to development."He joined the World Bank as an economist in education and human resources, and gained international recognition for his mathematical modelling of labour flows in the oil economies, creating "very complex models for the time". Another stint running urban and tourism projects followed.After that, "I went back to my real love, which was development and the problems of the very poor in West Africa. And then I was very focused on gender issues and environmental issues, which was not very fashionable at the time." He eventually managed all the Bank's technical projects in Africa.The World Bank made him vice-president in 1993, offering him a newly created portfolio, 'Environmentally Sustainable Development'.He recalls with a laugh: "I said, it should be Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development. And they said, 'Why not Economic?' I said, 'Because you guys in the World Bank are not likely to forget economics. But you're likely to forget environmental and social. So that's what I want to focus on.'"During this period, he addressed a pet concern, water shortages, famously declaring that "the wars of the next century will be over water". He helped create, and chaired, two international water groups. And "I also was pushing for microfinance with my good friend (Nobel Peace Prize recipient) Muhammad Yunus. We created CGAP (a microfinance programme)."CultureAlso, "I was always concerned with the issue of culture," he says.He explains: "A country is developing, and they have investments in education and in health and roads and energy - how much should they spend on preserving the heritage? Can you quantify that?" Believing that conventional cost-benefit models were "inherently erroneous", he developed models that brought out the advantages of preserving a nation's cultural heritage.Meanwhile, he was also involved with architectural issues, writing several books and sitting on architectural juries.As director of the Library of Alexandria, that commitment to a wide range of interests has not dimmed. He continues to write extensively in areas as diverse as biotechnology, the digital future, Islam, democracy and reform.In a recent monograph, The Shape of Tomorrow, he declares that the very structure of knowledge is transforming in profound ways. And he makes this bold assertion: "I am convinced that the cumulative effect of these transformations is the most profound revolution since the invention of writing."Asked about this extraordinary claim, he says simply, "I stand by that." And then proceeds to explain and defend his thesis with compelling logic.With such a wide-ranging body of work to draw from, the one title he singles out comes as a bit of a surprise.He reveals: "You know, I've (written and edited) 60, 70 books by now. And the one I'm most proud of is a little book that I did on the modernity of Shakespeare. Before it was published, I sent it to the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka who is himself professor of literature. And he called me up, he said, 'I really like that.' I said, 'If you like it, why don't you write the foreword?' He said, 'OK, I will.' And he wrote a nice foreword to it." He beams with pride.And another comment from left field: "You know, besides my honorary doctorates and medals and so on, another thing I'm really proud of is that I'm a scuba diver - I was a close friend of Jacques Cousteau - (and) I have a coral named after me!"He elaborates: "Tim Wirth (who became president of the UN Foundation) and I launched the International Coral Reef Initiative. I supported other (similar initiatives). Professor (J.E.N) Veron of Australia, in his monumental Corals of the World, named a coral after me - Montastrea Serageldini. So I'm very proud of that, too."And his proudest achievement? It isn't hard to guess. He puts it this way: "It's kind of funny. When I would issue a new book about architecture, people at the Bank asked, 'What's that got to do with your job?' I said, 'Nothing. Who said it has to do something with my job?'"I wrote this book on Shakespeare, and again people asked me, 'What's that got to do with your job?'"And then my friends at architectural juries and seminars would say, 'What are you doing at the World Bank, with all these economists?'"Now finally, with the Library of Alexandria, there is no topic that is outside of my job. Let it be science, history, art, literature, it's part of my job. So now when people ask me, I say, the journey of my life has been a preparation for this magnificent job."Smiling broadly, he concludes, "So the summation of all the best possible jobs is to be a librarian."And Ismail Serageldin, Librarian of Alexandria, leans back and gives a hearty and deeply satisfied laugh.kenjames@sph.com.sgISMAIL SERAGELDINDirector, Library of Alexandria1944 Born in Giza, EgyptEducation1964 BSc Eng'g (First Class Honors) Cairo University1968 MRP (With Distinction) Harvard University1972 PhD Econs Harvard UniversityWorld Bank1972 Joined as Economist in education and human resources1993 Vice-President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development1998 Vice-President for Special ProgramsFrom 2001 Director, Library of AlexandriaAmbassador, the Alliance of CivilizationsChairman of the Executive Council, World Digital Library (WDL)Other appointments (selected)1994-2000 Chairman, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)1995-2000 Chairman, Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP)1996-2000 Chairman, the Global Water Partnership1998-2000 Chairman, World Commission for Water in the 21st CenturyAwarded 33 honorary doctoratesAuthored/edited more than 60 books and monographs, 200 articles存倉