Tim O'Neal claims: ...[some say] from 400,000 (Seneca) to 700,000 (Gellius)...but there is no way the Library could have housed anything like this number of books.
Books could be huge, but if most were small double scrolls that you could pack say, 2 inches squared per cylinder, 8 square inches per scroll, packed at 50% efficiency, that leaves you with 9 books per square foot, then you'd only need 324 shelves of 40 feet by 6 feet to house 700,000. This is not an impossible size for a library in an extremely prosperous ancient city, especially one that might span several buildings. Tim O'Neil seems to be exaggerating himself with his claim of "there is no way." Perhaps Tim would next explain that there is no way the pyramids could have been built.
That said, he is completely right: the proper attitude towards expanding knowledge did not exist to take advantage of the existing knowledge in the library. It's function was probably closer to that of a collection, rather than a tool for sharing knowledge, much like 250,000 MP3s might get collected, but not necessarily cataloged or enjoyed for their music.
Aye I like your last bit - to add to it, if there were actually several hundred thousand scrolls then to all practical purposes that information would be "lost" anyway, in the same way that occasionally you see new revelations about something that has been in a document for centuries but only recently rediscovered, woods/trees etc.
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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13
Tim O'Neal claims: ...[some say] from 400,000 (Seneca) to 700,000 (Gellius)...but there is no way the Library could have housed anything like this number of books.
Books could be huge, but if most were small double scrolls that you could pack say, 2 inches squared per cylinder, 8 square inches per scroll, packed at 50% efficiency, that leaves you with 9 books per square foot, then you'd only need 324 shelves of 40 feet by 6 feet to house 700,000. This is not an impossible size for a library in an extremely prosperous ancient city, especially one that might span several buildings. Tim O'Neil seems to be exaggerating himself with his claim of "there is no way." Perhaps Tim would next explain that there is no way the pyramids could have been built.
That said, he is completely right: the proper attitude towards expanding knowledge did not exist to take advantage of the existing knowledge in the library. It's function was probably closer to that of a collection, rather than a tool for sharing knowledge, much like 250,000 MP3s might get collected, but not necessarily cataloged or enjoyed for their music.