Toward a knowledge base of literary content focusing on the ancient Library of Alexandria in the three dimensional space

Abstract

In our paper we would like to introduce a three-dimensional virtual library model based on the system and presumable content of the ancient Library of Alexandria. We use the classification system elaborated by the famous librarian, poet and scholar Callimachus focusing primarily on the field of Greek poetry and drama in the 3rd century BC. Accordingly, we select those ancient and well-known authors on that field whose texts, completed with short biographical data, may be a good starting point for the content of the virtual library which we would like to gradually develop to be a knowledge base of literary content. Currently we are using the English translations of the selected ancient Greek texts with the intention to gradually improve the content of the library with other texts and multimedia materials (other translations, paintings, commentaries, related texts from the ancient and modern culture etc.) which would serve as background knowledge for the interpretation of the texts. We present a web-based search and presentation interface created for our three dimensional virtual library model which provides both a 3D and a spatial 2D hypertext representation of the search results. We describe a scale-free network model, the so-called Alexandrian model of network, which the organization and future development of the represented library content is based on. Finally, we discuss the main purpose and possible applications of our virtual library model.