A Decade of Successful Partnership… Qatari and British Libraries Enriching Human Knowledge

Doha: The partnership between the Qatar National Library (QNL) and the British Library (BL) is one of the most prominent partnerships that the British institution has concluded throughout its long history to enrich human knowledge and make information available to researchers worldwide. This partnership, which began in 2012, resulted in the launch of the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) in 2014 as part of a long-term partnership between Qatar Foundation (QF), QNL, and BL. After ten years since its inception, it has become one of the largest digitization projects for national libraries, as the partnership includes the digitization of a large collection of the BLs holdings to deepen the understanding of the modern history and cultural and civilizational heritage of the Gulf region and the Arab and Islamic worlds. In collaboration with QNL, the BL has digitized its collections of Gulf history and Arab science and made them available to millions of users around the world, opening up new areas of research and creativ ity, and revolutionizing the ease of accessing, viewing, and studying these collections rich in historical information. In January 2019, the third phase of the partnership began and saw the digitization of 900,000 new pages of documents and records on the history of the Gulf region, as well as manuscripts of Arabic works in the fields of science, medicine, engineering, and astronomy. New digitized materials about the Gulf include music, maps, ships logs, reports, letters, correspondence, private papers, and historical publications. Most of the reports, letters, and documents selected for the digitization project in its third phase constituted completely new material for researchers as they had not been indexed or published before. These documents shed new light on the history of the State of Qatar and the Gulf region, particularly the East India Companys (EIC) ship records from the 17th century to the mid-19th century, after being converted into digital maps that help users learn about the steady increase in the number of shipping operations between the Gulf, India, and Britain, since the first moments of the Gulf regions integration into the global economy. Head of British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership (BLQFP) Saba Syed told Qatar News Agency on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the partnership that this project is an example of a successful partnership between two national libraries, adding that the two libraries worked together to create a unique, open, and easily accessible resource about the Middle East, accomplished through a detailed and complex digitization process that involved technical challenges that were overcome using innovative digital solutions to make historical documents available. She explained that the QDL is a special partnership that includes a huge archive containing 2,400,000 archival images, maps, manuscripts, photographs, audio recordings, and many other items from the BLs collections. It features a guide with descriptions in both Arabic and English, as well as over 200 articles by experts in both languages. The digital library highlights the rich cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf region and beyond, and it is available online for free for the first time, becoming an important resource and tool for researchers, historians, and enthusiasts of all ages with a passion for knowledge. The project involved the BLs collections including the British governments India Office Records (IOR) covering the period from 1763 to 1951, private documents and Arabic scientific manuscripts, including maps, photographs, records, correspondence, audio files, and manuscripts, all of which provide insight into the rich life, politics, business and culture of the Gulf region, Head of BLQFP added. She said that among the most prominent documents are 500 maps and plans of the Arabian Gulf and the region as a whole, private papers of Sir Lewis Pelly, who resided in the Gulf between 1862 and 1872, and Arabic scientific manuscripts from the British Library's Manuscripts Collections, covering t opics such as medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and engineering. The content highlights a selection of photographs, postcards, sketches, drawings, watercolors, etchings, engravings, and illustrations, she added. Source: Qatar News Agency