The opening episode of Carl Sagan ’s TV series Cosmos, first shown in 1980, lamented the most famous burning of books in history—the conflagration that destroyed the Library of Alexandria.

The Robert Robinson Library closed in 1962, and today, it is the home of the Alexandria Black History Museum. The museum is the first site totally devoted to the city's African-American history.

The opening episode of Carl Sagan’s TV series Cosmos, first shown in 1980, lamented the most famous burning of books in history—the conflagration that destroyed the Library of Alexandria ...

Photo contributed William "Buddy" Evans, at left, Otto Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris L. Murray and Clarence "Buck" Strange are escorted by police out of the “whites only” Alexandria Library on ...

And so, in 283 BCE, the great library at Alexandria was born. Over decades, its librarians and scholars packed it with hundreds of thousands of scrolls.

The famous library of Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the most important repositories of knowledge in the ancient world. Built in the fourth century B.C., it flourished for some six centuries, was ...