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Bibliotheca Alexandrina plans expansion to accommodate more activities With the Bibliotheca established as a significant cultural venue, director Serageddin is ready to embark on greater projects
Bibliotheca Alexandrina is preparing for expansion to accommodate the space needed for its cultural activities and events, according to Ismail Serageddin,director of the Bibliotheca. Expansions include constructing a new administrative building east of Alexandria to serve an audience from Alexandria and neighboring governorates. “This is only part of our expansions plan; we aim to build a library for academic dissertations inBorg El-Arabcity west of Alexandria, as it doesn't have a library to serve students and researchers,”Serageddin explained. “Bibliotheca Alexandrina's role during the past years has encouraged us to run into new projects that will represent a major shift to the Egyptian and Arab society,” Serageddin said. One of these new projects isMadinet Aloloum(Sciences City), which will be built on 126,000 km2 in the area between Cairo and Western Desert.Serageddin said that this project is a national project and the Bibliotheca will take over its execution from the Ministry of Higher Education. Serageddin agreed with the Bibliotheca's board of trustees to undertake additioaln research regarding this enormous scientific project, especially because it is the largest for the Bibliotheca so far and of high importance to reinforce scientific research in Egypt.Serageddinexpects the project's blueprints to be finished in 18 months. “The Bibliotheca achieved some great leaps during the last period on digitizing and indexing books and manuscripts; we succeeded in providing more than 41 digital databases containing 62,780 electronic books, serving more than 24,000 users,” Serageddine commented.
