Museion or Vault? Universal or Hetairoi? It Depends on Accessibility

ICUDL ’06 Slide 1/13Nayel Shafei

Museion or Vault?Universal or Hetairoi?

It Depends on Accessibility

Nayel ShafeiEnkido

Nov. 2006


The News of My Demise is Greatly Exaggerated

• In 391 AD, The Museion and Serapium of Bibliotheca Alexandrina were sacked, demolished, and its priest,Hypatia, killed.

Eusebius (d.410), Socrates Scholasticus (d. 460)

“Ecclesiastical HISTORY”, and taught by Two escaped heraitoi grammaticians

• Still in 550 AD, Byzantine Emperor, John Paleiologos IV, evidently unaware of the demise of B.A., sent emissaries to copy books from B.A., a deeply respected, but distant institution.


Why Am I Here?

• Only provider of OC-768. – Offering NBC News Library to NBC affiliates

(Nippon TV, Univision, …) over 1.5 Gbps HDTV.

• Member of the Evaluation Board of US National Library of Medicine

• Co-Founder of Internet-2• Supporting Wikipedia (Arabic, Coptic,

Japanese)


Universal Libraries In The Age of the Internet

• Catalyst & Depository of Digital Content– Problems:

• Ave. Lifespan of a digital-content website is 2-3 years. • Lack of Exposure to other civilizations’ views of the same subject.

– Solution: • Adopt Wikipedia of local languages (B.A.: Arabic, Coptic, Nubian) • Proactively obtain authorization from content owners

• Depository of New Books– Problem: Books don’t sell. – Solution: Put them online, Compensate through “Public Lending Rights”.

• Depository of Heritage Books– Problem: Scattered efforts for scanning, with no publishing.– Solution: Master library for all scanned and digitized heritage books.

• Venue for Interaction of Civilizations– Resurrect the Fellowship of the Library. – Encourage two-way Translations


Museion with Universal Broadcast

• B.A. should not acquiesce to be a time vault. It rather should revive its role as a Museion, a place for thinking with a system of fellowships.

• To avoid the insularity of the Hetairoi, the closely knit fellows, B.A. should proactively spread all its content and activities through unhindered broadband access to the universe.


Financial Model

• Public Lending Rights• Continuing Medical Education

– Bethesda System for pathologists– National Library of Medicine’s “Pub Med”– Arabian Board, Eg. M.o. Health

• Genome Library – For local species (Gujarat Cotton vs. Monsanto)

• News Clearing House– For regional TV stations


Role of Bandwidth

• In the Age of the Internet, a Library does not have to own a copy of the content, as long as it can network into it.

• Bandwidth is Central for a Digital Library– Internet Archive needs 2 Gbps

• Continuing Medical Education requires OC-12 (622 Mbps)


How to Get Bandwidth

• Pay for it, Or • Legislate the appropriation of a share (~5%) of Fiber

passing through Egypt for Commons use (Libraries, Education, Medicine)

• In 1999, Global Crossing signed an agreement to pay $10,000 a year to pass through the Suez Canal.

• Enkido pays $64,000 a month to enter a single building in New York City.

• B.A. pays $1.8 m for 15-yr IRU on a STM-1 plus $0.5 m annual maintenance, = $0.8 m a year.

• There are ~12,000 STM-1 that pass through Egypt


Wasted Revenue/Bandwidth

• Cable Owners can pay in kind (bandwidth for libraries, schools) or in cash.

• Egypt is wasting $750 million annual revenue on Cables passing through Egypt.– Using FCC & City of New York Fees– Based on 12,000 STM-1 (Telegeography

2006 assessment, ±20%)– $2 Billion a year by 2016


Revenue of Cables Passing Through Egypt

2007 2010 2017

STM-1 12,000 26,364 165,000

Regulatory $43 m $95 m $596 m

ROW $360 m $450 m $660 m

Maint. $300 m $421 m $814 m

Regen. $43 m $60 m $117 m

Total 746 m $1.03 Billion $2.19 Billion

Regulatory: $1.47/DS0 (FCC), ROW: $20/ft (NYC), Maint.: $50K/km (NOAA), Regen: $300K/month/station


Commons Policy

• Municipalities, including the City of New York offers the franchise of laying fiber for a fee combined with the condition of getting a share (~5%) of the fiber for Commons use (Education, Libraries, Hospitals, etc.)


Public Lending Rights

• A system used by public libraries in Europe, and other countries, since 1946, to compensate book authors based on number of times a book is checked out.

• B.A. should be the leader in offering an online version of PLR.

• PLR may save publishing in dormant languages


We Need to Move Fast

• Or else


[email protected]

Museion or Vault? Universal or Hetairoi? It Depends on Accessibility

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