Physical libraries are limited by natural laws. A book cannot be in more than a single place at any given moment, and each copy requires immense labor once performed by humans, but now by energy consuming machines. In the past, before the printing press, a hand inscribed religious manuscript took the dedication of a lifetime, and its status as an original copy limited its accessibility. No digitized copy could compete with seeing the hand-illuminated borders of gilded medieval manuscripts.

With digitization of material comes democratization. Objects that were once owned and coveted by a single person can now be accessed by everyone and, in a way, owned by all that access it. The concept of location means different things in the physical world than the digital world, and the organization of knowledge has changed to reflect that (Seto). In the digital, pieces of writing can exist in a multitude of places at once with an infinite amount of communication channels (hyperlinks) drawing them together. Location becomes irrelevant because every node exists somewhere simultaneously.

Ptolemy’s quest in the creation of the library of Alexandria was to buy, steal, or copy all writings of the known world to build an unending repository of text. Thousands of original writings inscribed on papyrus scrolls were packed floor to ceiling in towering cascades. Medical texts, cosmological predictions, mystic incantations, manuscripts, epics, and early mathematical equations were superimposed, buzzing together like atoms (Gleick). It was the vastest collection of knowledge in one place that, after it burned, wouldn’t be seen to that volume until the 16th century.

The burning of the Great Library was an event horizon to the Romans, a wall through which no knowledge would pass. And this was proven true for the most part. The written word is fragile, prone to decay and destruction. If you have the time, you can find all of these lost pieces of knowledge in the Library of Babel.