QNL spend millions for digitising historic Gulf documents

Qatar National Library, a member of Qatar Foundation, has paid British Library £8.7m for nearly half a million documents relating to the Gulf to be digitised.

QNL started this project with British Library in 2012, and many of those documents have now gone online at the library's digital library portal.

A project of this magnitude, facilitating universal access to a major archive in English and Arabic, could potentially change perceptions of the Middle East - from outside, and also from within.

"In Europe, these kind of funds are not available," says Dr Joachim Gierlichs of the QNL, referring to the millions provided by the Qatar Foundation.

Gierlichs adds that the partnership between QNL and The British Library will enable Qatar and the Gulf to discover their own history.

The BL and Qatar National Library both hold copies of the digitised archive, which is currently hosted by Amazon.

There are some insecurities regarding censorship once the portal is eventually transferred for hosting in Qatar, as it could theoretically expose material to manipulation by Qatari censors. [Source: BBC News]

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By yussss• 23 Oct 2014 07:08

"Digital library portal" link is not working

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QNL spend millions for digitising historic Gulf documents

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