The Memory Library: How the Library in Hellenistic Alexandria Worked

Abstract

For millennia the famous library in Hellenistic Alexandria has been praised as an epicenter of enlightenment and wisdom. And yet, a question still seems unanswered: how was its literature classified and retrieved? It is a subject that has been given surprisingly little attention by the field of library-and-information science―indeed, by scholarship in general. Furthermore, a certain way of thinking has influenced the few answers that have so far been attempted. It is as if the scholars of our era have tried to identify the modern, physical library in the Hellenistic library in Alexandria. But such an approach is biased in a basic way: It simply does not consider the impact of the cultural and intellectual context of the library. This article differs fundamentally, because I reject the notion that the library was like those of today. Accordingly, an entirely new way of understanding how the library actually worked, in terms of classification and retrieval processes is presented. The key element is to understand the library both as a physical structure and as a struc- ture in the memory of the Alexandrian scholars. In this article, these structures are put together so as to propose a new interpretation of the library.