Director-General of Bibliotheca Alexandrina visited NSZL

On May 8, 2015, Dr. László Tüske, Director-General of National Széchényi Library received Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director-General of Bibliotheca Alexandrina in his office. Mr. Serageldin arrived in Budapest to attend a two-day conference, “The Global Round Table”, organized by Pázmány Péter Catholic University. He extended his official conference program by a day, in order to pay a visit to National Széchényi Library.

Our guest began his visit by taking a short walk in the Library building, which was followed by a visit to NSZL’s Special Collections where he could have a look at some Egypt-related documents. After that, Dr. Ismail Serageldin held a lecture entitled “Bibliotheca Alexandrina: past, present and future”. His one-hour lecture was richly illustrated by dozens of pictures. In his lecture, Mr. Serageldin gave a cultural historical overview of the most influential institution of ancient science, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, showing its foundation, major personalities and scholarly effects. Following that, he presented the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina which was opened in 2002 and has been directed by Dr. Ismail Serageldin ever since. Bibliotheca Alexandrina is not only the biggest library of the Arab world but it is also a huge cultural complex equipped with theater and conference halls, by an orchestra of its own and by large exhibition space. Mr. Serageldin’s lecture included impressive numbers: an annual number of several hundreds of events, dozens of exhibitions and hundreds of thousands of visitors. This is all Bibliotheca Alexandrina. An interesting point of the lecture was when the Director General talked about Bibliotheca Alexandrina becoming a symbol of reconciliation in the course of recent political earthquakes. He related that during street riots, people protected the building of the Library with their own bodies.

At the end of the program, Dr. László Tüske and Dr. Ismail Serageldin signed a cooperation agreement between National Széchényi Library and Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

The event in pictures