Metadata for Scientific Data:Historical Considerations, Current Practice,and Prospects

摘要

Libraries have always served as repositories for scientific output. The Great Library at Alexandria’s collection covered mathematics, physics, biology,astronomy, geography, and medicine. Initiated during the early Ptolemaic period (332–30 BCE), the Great Library at Alexandria emerged as a major center for scholarship, illuminating Alexandria’s thriving intellectual and scientific climate. Highlighting three selected scientific advancements of the time, Euclid (c.323–283 BCE) wrote the Elements; Eratosthenes (c.276–195 BCE),the third librarian of the Great Library at Alexandria, calculated the earth’s circumference; and Hipparchus (c.190–120 BCE) invented Trigonometry.