""The Library of Babel" (Spanish: La biblioteca de Babel) is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format." (from wikipedia)
I immediately thought of the same thing. Personally, I like the idea of the Library of Babel more than, say, "all data is found in Pi". There's an important aspect to the story that really drives home the point, a hopelessness in the search as well as dealing with the nigh-incomprehensible scale. Well worth the read, as it brings the idea to a visceral level.
I'm at a loss for the story about indexing meaningfully the library, but I think I may have found a neat article on the Library:
james.grimmelmann.net/files/Library.markdown
http://hyperdiscordia.crywalt.com/library_of_babel.html
""The Library of Babel" (Spanish: La biblioteca de Babel) is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format." (from wikipedia)