As ever, we’ve had a very busy month, so apologies if this is a bit of a long post…
Firstly, and most importantly for those of you who hadn’t realised, the Library now opens at 0900 rather than 0915, allowing an extra quarter of an hour a day for all that essential reading!
The OIL open day for new students (and anyone else tempted by the sweets) was held on the afternoon of Friday 10th October and was well-attended, with many of the students staying behind after the introductions for training on SOLO, PCAS and other library-related matters, and also to sample the abovementioned sweets, generously provided this year by Dinah Manisty and Alasdair Watson. Alasdair also made himself available to talk to people about Arabic Manuscripts, and had an interesting slideshow on his laptop showing some fine examples.
Kate hinted during the introductions that there would be a new competition for Michaelmas Term, the final announcement of which was delayed by a week due to operational matters (she and her colleague at the Humanities Theses desk, Rob Wilkes, moved into the Weston Library from Osney Mead on the 16th October and things were a bit hectic for a few days). We have now, however, launched the “Name the Stapler” Competition – see posters at the Library desk or the previous blog post for details. We hope to have a good number of entries before the competition closes in 8th week, so get naming!
We welcomed Dawn back from her trip to Australia on the 20th – it sounds like she had a lovely time!
New e-Resources for Arabic materials
Dinah has asked that we pass on information about the following exciting new electronic resources which are available to Library users.
Firstly, there is the Qatar Digital Library Online portal at the British Library, a great new archival resource on the region.
The QDL has been developed as part of a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding on Partnerships between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library and The British Library.
A wide range of content from the British Library’s collections (more specifically their colonial archives related to the Gulf Region) have been digitized since 2012, reaching a total of 500,000 images that will be available to browse and search by the end of 2014.
The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualised explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic.
This archive is bound to transform the study of Gulf history, improving understanding of the Islamic world, Arabic cultural heritage and the modern history of the Gulf.
You can find more info on the Qatar Digital Library at http://www.qdl.qa/en/about.
Try it for yourself (Qatar Digital Library portal) and please let the students know about this great (and free!) new resource.
Also, do let us know what you think of the following, available until November 22nd:
1) Classic Arabic Texts Online (trial until 22 November 2014)
And finally, we have added the following to our Brill package:
2) Early Western Korans Online: Koran Printing in the West, 1537-1857
Dinah is responsible for this side of the Library’s work, so do let her know if you have used these and whether you have any feedback to give; we try to keep up as best we can with the latest resources which are available, but if any of you know of any we should have and don’t, please do get in touch!
As we said, a bumper post for October! We hope for more of the same in November!