1.
Library of Congress
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The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States, the Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C. it also maintains the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The Library of Congress claims to be the largest library in the world and its collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 450 languages. Two-thirds of the books it acquires each year are in other than English. The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for years in the temporary national capitals of New York. John J. Beckley, who became the first Librarian of Congress, was two dollars per day and was required to also serve as the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s, most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812. To restore its collection in 1815, the bought from former president Thomas Jefferson his entire personal collection of 6,487 books. After a period of growth, another fire struck the Library in its Capitol chambers in 1851, again destroying a large amount of the collection. The Library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to have two copies deposited of books, maps, illustrations and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections of British and other European works and it included several stories built underground of steel and cast iron stacks. Although the Library is open to the public, only high-ranking government officials may check out books, the Library promotes literacy and American literature through projects such as the American Folklife Center, American Memory, Center for the Book, and Poet Laureate. James Madison is credited with the idea for creating a congressional library, part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress. And for fitting up an apartment for containing them. Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and 3 maps, was housed in the new Capitol, as president, Thomas Jefferson played an important role in establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. The new law also extended to the president and vice president the ability to borrow books and these volumes had been left in the Senate wing of the Capitol. One of the only congressional volumes to have survived was a government account book of receipts and it was taken as a souvenir by a British Commander whose family later returned it to the United States government in 1940. Within a month, former president Jefferson offered to sell his library as a replacement
2.
Wikipedia
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Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that aims to allow anyone to edit articles. Wikipedia is the largest and most popular reference work on the Internet and is ranked among the ten most popular websites. Wikipedia is owned by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia was launched on January 15,2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined its name, a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia, There was only the English language version initially, but it quickly developed similar versions in other languages, which differ in content and in editing practices. With 5,377,348 articles, the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias, in 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 science articles from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, and found that Wikipedias level of accuracy approached Encyclopædia Britannicas. Other collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before Wikipedia, but none were so successful, Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. Nupedia was founded on March 9,2000, under the ownership of Bomis and its main figures were Jimmy Wales, the CEO of Bomis, and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was licensed initially under its own Nupedia Open Content License, while Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal. On January 10,2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a project for Nupedia. Wikipedia was launched on January 15,2001, as a single English-language edition at www. wikipedia. com, Wikipedias policy of neutral point-of-view was codified in its first months. Otherwise, there were few rules initially and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia. Originally, Bomis intended to make Wikipedia a business for profit, Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. By August 8,2001, Wikipedia had over 8,000 articles, on September 25,2001, Wikipedia had over 13,000 articles. By the end of 2001, it had grown to approximately 20,000 articles and 18 language editions and it had reached 26 language editions by late 2002,46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the final days of 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the servers were taken down permanently in 2003. Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control in Wikipedia and these moves encouraged Wales to announce that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and to change Wikipedias domain from wikipedia. com to wikipedia. org. Around 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia in 2006, a team at the Palo Alto Research Center attributed this slowing of growth to the projects increasing exclusivity and resistance to change. Others suggest that the growth is flattening naturally because articles that could be called low-hanging fruit—topics that clearly merit an article—have already been created, the Wall Street Journal cited the array of rules applied to editing and disputes related to such content among the reasons for this trend
3.
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
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The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a major library and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. It is both a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, and an attempt to rekindle something of the brilliance that this center of study. The notion of recreating the ancient library was adopted by other individuals, an architectural design competition was organized by UNESCO in 1988 to choose a design worthy of the site and its heritage. The competition was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, the first pledges were made for funding the project at a conference held in 1990 in Aswan, USD $65 million, mostly from the Arab states. Construction work began in 1995 and, after some USD $220 million had been spent, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is trilingual, containing books in Arabic, English, and French. In 2010, the received a donation of 500,000 books from the National Library of France. The gift makes the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world, the BA also is now the largest depository of French books in the Arab world, surpassing those of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, in addition to being the main French library in Africa. The dimensions of the project are vast, the library has space for eight million books. The librarys architecture is equally striking, the main reading room stands beneath a 32-meter-high glass-panelled roof, tilted out toward the sea like a sundial, and measuring some 160 m in diameter. The walls are of gray Aswan granite, carved with characters from 120 different human scripts, the collections at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina were donated from all over the world. The Spanish donated documents that detailed their period of Moorish rule, the French also donated, giving the library documents dealing with the building of the Suez Canal. The BA/IA partnership is built with the aims to preserve heritage for future generations, the BA maintains the only mirror and external backup of the Internet Archive. The Taha Hussein Library contains materials for the blind and visually impaired using special software that makes it possible for readers to read books and journals. It is named after Taha Hussein, the Egyptian professor of Arabic and literary critic and one of the figures of the Arab Renaissance in literature. Contains book collections of Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature from 1901 to present, the Nobel Section was inaugurated by Queen Silvia of Sweden and Queen Sonja of Norway on 24 April 2002. Nobel Section Established in 2001, the BA Antiquities Museum is the first archeological museum to be situated within a library, the primary aims of the museum are to promote research, creativity, and cultural awareness. The collection includes underwater antiquities from the Mediterranean seabed near the Eastern Harbour, the museum provides descriptions of artifacts in three languages, English, Arabic, and French. The Manuscript Museum provides visitors and researchers with rare manuscripts and books, Established in 2001, the Manuscript Museum contains the worlds largest collection of digital manuscripts
4.
Alexandria
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Alexandria is the second largest city and a major economic centre in Egypt, extending about 32 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country. Its low elevation on the Nile delta makes it vulnerable to rising sea levels. Alexandria is Egypts largest seaport, serving approximately 80% of Egypts imports and exports and it is an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. Alexandria is also an important tourist destination, Alexandria was founded around a small Ancient Egyptian town c.331 BC by Alexander the Great. Alexandria was the second most powerful city of the ancient world after Rome, Alexandria is believed to have been founded by Alexander the Great in April 331 BC as Ἀλεξάνδρεια. Alexanders chief architect for the project was Dinocrates, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis as a Hellenistic center in Egypt, and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley. The city and its museum attracted many of the greatest scholars, including Greeks, Jews, the city was later plundered and lost its significance. Just east of Alexandria, there was in ancient times marshland, as early as the 7th century BC, there existed important port cities of Canopus and Heracleion. The latter was rediscovered under water. An Egyptian city, Rhakotis, already existed on the shore also and it continued to exist as the Egyptian quarter of the city. A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt and never returned to his city, after Alexanders departure, his viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the expansion. Although Cleomenes was mainly in charge of overseeing Alexandrias continuous development, the Heptastadion, inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the center of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage. In a century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and and it became Egypts main Greek city, with Greek people from diverse backgrounds. Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism, but was home to the largest urban Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Tanakh, was produced there, in AD115, large parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Kitos War, which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it. On 21 July 365, Alexandria was devastated by a tsunami, the Islamic prophet, Muhammads first interaction with the people of Egypt occurred in 628, during the Expedition of Zaid ibn Haritha. He sent Hatib bin Abi Baltaeh with a letter to the king of Egypt and Alexandria called Muqawqis In the letter Muhammad said, I invite you to accept Islam, Allah the sublime, shall reward you doubly. But if you refuse to do so, you bear the burden of the transgression of all the Copts
5.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
6.
Biblioteca Nacional de Chile
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The Biblioteca Nacional de Chile is the national library of Chile. In the newspaper El Monitor Araucano, a Proclama de Fundación of the Biblioteca Nacional was published on August 19,1813, with this vision, a call was made to all the citizens to submit their books for the formation of one great public library. As with other institutions, the library was closed after the Disaster of Rancagua. With the victorious Battle of Chacabuco, it was reopened and supported by the government, the Supreme Director of Chile, Bernardo OHiggins, named professor Manuel de Salas as the first director of the Biblioteca Nacional. In 1822 Friar Camilo Henríquez newspaper was named as the head librarian. Since its creation, the library had been a dependency of the Universidad de San Felipe and its successor, in 1913, upon its 100th anniversary, the Biblioteca Nacional acquired the Monasterio de Santa Clara, located on the Alameda de las Delicias on present-day Cerro Santa Lucía. At the creation in 1929, the library was made into a dependency of the Dirección de Bibliotecas, since 1925, Biblioteca Nacional has been situated in the centre of Santiago, Chile. It was formerly located in the square where now stands the Teatro Municipal de Santiago, construction of the present building began in 1913. It was commissioned as one of the public works in honour of the first centenary of the independence of Chile. The building boasts an imposing façade of columns and arches, of very pronounced French neoclassical influence, the library shares its building with the Archivo Nacional de Chile. Adjoining the building is the Santa Lucía metro station, and to the east is Cerro Santa Lucía, the Biblioteca Nacional has an extensive and valuable collection of books and manuscripts. Several of these were acquired from or donated by their owners, the most important collections include, List of national libraries Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts La Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. David H. Stam, ed. International Dictionary of Library Histories, media related to Biblioteca Nacional de Chile at Wikimedia Commons
