The Library of Alexandria
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This issue of Sooner Horizon is a tribute to some of those unusual “containers.” The Western History Collections’ current exhibit features stunning pottery created by Maria Martinez, along with beautiful ledger drawings and baskets from the Lakota and Hopi people, while exploring the influences of tourism on American Indian art of the Southwest. The John and Mary Nichols collections provide yet another window into a variety of containers in the form of letters, maps and language translation, illustrating the significance of linguistic knowledge transfer. We have an early transcontinental example of knowledge transfer contained in one of our newest acquisitions from the History of Science Collections, a very rare engineering textbook written in Chinese by Johann Schreck in 1627. The University of Oklahoma’s special collections house a wonderfully unique variety of information containers, the products of accumulated knowledge over many centuries.
But the world’s first great library, the Library of Alexandria, was not a collection of books at all. Books did not exist in the 3rd century B.C. Rather, the library was the home for thousands of papyrus scrolls, in addition to gardens, dining rooms, lecture halls, and meeting spaces. The first great library was about content, learning and knowledge -and that’s what libraries are about today. I make this point because scholarly content can come in many containers.
pecial collections libraries are containers for books, and yet they are also so much more than that. The term for book comes from the Latin Liber, and every definition of the term library starts with “a collection of books.” For centuries, most of the world’s recorded knowledge and artistic expression through language was captured in books, which explains why the connection between a library and books has endured for so long.
Rick Luce Dean, University Libraries Professor and Peggy V. Helmerich Chair Associate Vice President for Research, Norman Campus
Sincerely,
The great Library of Alexandria still captures the spirit and range of purpose associated with research libraries. The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina opened in 2003. In addition to millions of books, it boasts a planetarium, nine permanent exhibitions, four art galleries, eight academic research centers, a visualization laboratory (for virtual reality displays) and a conference center. “BibAlex” continues to be a role model for research libraries. Perhaps it can stimulate our imagination as we plan to take OU’s containers of knowledge into a 21st-century environment, where research, discovery and new knowledge remain the core of our mission -- while delivered in new ways.
More important, the collections contain the primary materials that are the seeds that feed original research resulting in discovery and new knowledge. It is our mission to provide access to these treasures to students, scholars and interested members of the public at large.
“There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away” - Emily Dickinson
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