The BA Participates in the World Digital Library and Establishes One for Inscriptions
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Alexandria—
Dr. Ismail Seragedlin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, participated in the 34th session of the General Conference of UNESCO, 15-19 October 2007, in Paris, France, to unveil a prototype of the World Digital Library (WDL), to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness.
On the threshold of the BA celebrations marking the its fifth anniversary, the BA had enriched the cultural and scientific arena in Egypt, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean with works and publications serving humanity and participating in the progress of our societies.
The Calligraphy Center, one of the research centers at the BA, proved to be on top of the international centers in the field, and developed several partnerships with leading institutions around the world, including a partnership with the British Museum. The Center is leading an ambitious project to establish "Digital Library for Inscriptions" to serve researchers, students and scholars. The Center took major steps towards the implementation of the first phase of the project, recording more than 2 thousand inscriptions in Arabic and English, which are now subject to revision and refinement. The second phase will include digitizing more than 5 thousand inscriptions. In the digitization processes, the Center followed the state of the art techniques to provide researchers with detailed descriptions and pictures of the inscriptions to facilitate the search process. The Calligraphy Center is also preparing a Dictionary of Determinatives of the Ancient Egyptian Language, which is the first specialized dictionary issued by an Egyptian institution specialized in the language of our ancestors.