W hat was the Ancient Library of
Alexandria?
*The most famous among all ancient and
medieval libraries
*Largest library in all antiquity
*Largest research institution well known
by scholars from all over the
Mediterranean.
Even after its disappearance since 1600
years ago, it continues to survive in the
memory of all scholars to this day.
The ancient Library
of Alexandria in 300
BC captured much of
the world’s science by
collecting over
700,000 papyrus
scrolls giving birth to
the first university.
Ptolemy I Soter (c. 367/6-283/2 B.C.)
Library of Alexandria Today
“So that is the setting for the new Library of
Alexandria. A library for up to eight million books,
three museums, five research institutes, several
exhibition galleries, a planetarium and a conference
center that can accommodate some 3000 seats. The
beautiful new building, with its distinctive granite
wall covered by the letters of all the world's
alphabets, is today a recognizable landmark of the
new Alexandria.”
Ismail Serageldin
Librarian of Alexandria
Target: everybody
Supercourse model
Teacher in
Alexandria
Teacher in
Tanzania
Teacher in
Paris
Teacher in
Cairo
Teacher in
Pittsburgh
Teacher in
Moscow
Goal: To increase global health
equity by developing a costeffective means to provide access
to quality health, prevention and
science information world wide.
From Papyrus to PowerPoint: Steps
of the great Evolution
200 BC Papyrus
1500 AD Paper and Printed Books
1995 Electronic Books
October 16, 2002 PowerPoint
What is Supercourse today?
• The largest library of PowerPoint lectures
on prevention
• One of the largest networks of researchers,
scientists and healthcare workers from all
over the world
• The best known e-prevention initiative in
the world
What are we capturing now and
what do we want to capture in the
future?
Science
Prevention
Why are we concerned
about prevention?
In this century, life expectancy has improved in both
developed and developing countries to an extent that has
never been experienced in human history.
Life expectancy improvement (year)
The World Bank 1993
25
20
15
10
5
0
Medical treatment
Public health
Global Participants
9389 Faculty
134 UN member
Countries
Nobel Prize winner
Father of the Internet
Former Head CDC
+
Our dream is the
marriage between the
Library of Alexandria
and the Supercourse
Project to spread the
knowledge of science
worldwide
Supercourse and P2P systems
In Supercourse, we are
developing a system where the
users will be able to exchange
PowerPoint files as with Napster
Central Server file exchange Model
in the Library of Alexandria
Central Server in
Alexandria containing
PPT lectures
Cairo
New York
Mecca
System that allows
scientists to borrow and to
donate PPT lectures
Moscow
Supercourse in Alexandria and the
Ancient Library: What do they have in
common?
Ancient Library-700,000 papyrus scrolls
(125,000 books)
Library of Alexandria Supercourse-Potentially
5 million PowerPoint lectures on Science