The library comprised a "peripatos" (walk), gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms. However, the exact layout is not known. This model's influence may still be seen today in the layout of university campuses. The library itself is known to have had an acquisitions department (possibly built near the stacks, or for utility closer to the harbour), and a cataloguing department. The hall contained shelves for the collections of scrolls (as the books were at this time on papyrus scrolls), known as "bibliothekai" ("βιβλιοθῆκαι"). It was rumored that carved into the wall above the shelves, a famous inscription read: "The place of the cure of the soul."