Here is the letter that we ideally address to anyone interested in promoting culture:

Dear Sir,

I am the director of Open Alexandria, a project promoted by Liber Liber (a cultural association which for fourteen years now has been carrying on a project very similar to yours), some Italian universities and other associations that have recently joined us.

The project, named in homage to the ancient and famous Library, was created to bring together all associations similar to ours that share the ideal of making culture more easily accessible to all while dealing with problems such as the efficient coordination of volunteers, the visibility of projects beyond national borders, how to catalogue texts and so on.

To achieve this, with the collaboration of university teachers and other experts in this sector, Liber Liber is creating an open source repository for digital multimedia archives management based on the most promising development strategy of recent years: acquiring users consensus and the contribution of a large scientific community.

The ambition is to offer the international community a medium that makes the most of available digital cultural resources: movies, literature, research projects, music, visual arts and scientific archives. These would be classified by rigorous standards but at the same time easily manageable, so that even public and private structures with fewer resources can install them, and with a user-friendly interface. One of the greatest advantages the repository could offer, is the opportunity for simultaneous access to documents of a different form and nature, as well as the possibility to mix and reuse them in different contexts.

The repository also aims to give considerable space to community instruments, promoting not only the cultural aspects of their contents but also their ability to create groups of interest, exchange and comparison. We can for example imagine applications in the field of education: teachers and students of different school levels and universities could get help preparing their syllabuses and finding material for lessons, essays, dissertations and so on.

This kind of use of the repository could give great results working together with institutes (such as government Education and Culture departments, libraries, schools, television channels) that posses a great number of digital documents and learning objects.

There is a good chance that Open Alexandria may be the cue for other people in the world to bring similar projects into being in their own nations, which would make this “universal Library” richer and richer. We will of course do everything possible to encourage this process – a free Web site I am sure would be of encouragement, especially to small associations. The Web site could either just host a simple description and link to the various national projects, or it could host the entire projects. This would depend on what is needed to enable each project to continue developing in perfect autonomy, while sharing a common point of reference and a cooperative spirit which would certainly be fruitful.

We look forward to receiving your support. Meanwhile we have created a Web page containing further information even though the details clearly still need to be defined. We are counting on your collaboration! You can have a look at the following URL: openalexandria.org

Best regards,
Liv D’Amelio
coordinator of Open Alexandria

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