Q Life Magazine Q Magazine December 2016 | Page 39
Qatari Lifestyle: Merging Tradition with Modernity |
| The British Library, London
one of the most exciting “global knowledge partnerships
in recent years”, the portal makes a wealth of original,
interpretative, contextual, and pedagogical resources in
Arabic and English freely available to the general public.
In its first 12 months, the Digital Library received 2.5
million page views from over 308,000 users across 219
countries. Since then, a joint agreement has been signed
to digitise a further 1,125,000 pages of content from
Arabic science and mathematics manuscripts.
Project highlights include the launch of a new digitised
photo album showing historical and architectural views
of Mecca and Medina dating back over a century to
coincide with the Hajj in 2014. These incredible pictures
offer a unique viewpoint on how the pilgrimage has
changed over time.
Creating such an extensive catalogue of multi-lingual
digital sources has been an ambitious, and sometimes
challenging, project for the British Library and Qatar
Foundation. However, as Her Highness Sheikha Moza
bint Nasser Al Missned noted, the partnership has
“helped shed light on the Gulf region’s fascinating
history and culture.”
British Library Chief Executive Roy Keating
concluded, “there’s something about finding a shared
vision that has unleashed an intellectual and creative
energy that I think is going to have really long-lasting
consequences…The more research we do, the more
we uncover…and we hope this is just the beginning.”
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