Partnerships | Qatar National Library

Local Partnerships

As an active member of the Qatar community, the Library has many partnership agreements with local educational, governmental and cultural institutions. These collaborations facilitate knowledge exchange, education advancement, research, skills development, joint events and exhibitions, and cultural preservation.

Memoranda of Understanding

The Library has signed Memoranda of Understanding with numerous regional and international institutions to encourage the digitization and sharing of historical materials, the sharing of Library expertise, and the development of Library staff. These include the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the National Library of the Netherlands, the National Archives of the Netherlands, the National Library of China, the National Library of Azerbaijan, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, the Ottoman Archives, the National Library in Turkey, and New York University.

International Partnerships

Through collaborative partnerships with national libraries, archives, universities and other institutions, Qatar National Library is helping to increase global access to cultural and heritage content. These relationships also better enable researchers and scholars from around the world to access the Library's historical, heritage and cultural items relating to Qatar and the Gulf.

Partnership with The British Library

The British Library-Qatar Foundation Partnership was launched in July 2012 to digitize the British Library's historical collections relating to the history of Qatar and the Gulf, medieval Arab science and medicine, and other cultural spheres. The project aims to transform people’s understanding of the history of the Gulf and wider Middle East.

The most visible outcome of the partnership is the Qatar Digital Library, managed by the Qatar National Library. It is the world’s largest open-access digital repository for Middle Eastern history.

The first two phases digitized more than 1.5 million pages, which are now freely accessible to users worldwide. Phase three of the project will involve the digitization of 900,000 pages of new material on the Arabian Gulf as well as Arabic manuscripts on science. The Arabian Gulf-related material includes music, maps, ships’ logs, reports, letters, private papers (including the historically important Curzon Papers) and historical publications.

Since its launch in October 2014, the Digital Library has had more than 1.1 million users and 9.6 million page views.

For more information or to browse the portal please visit www.qdl.qa

Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)

Qatar National Library is a founding member and the leading non-US partner of the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) through a partnership with the CLIR. The DLME aspires to create a sustainable digital environment for the cultural heritage of the Middle East and North Africa region and provide applications, tools and descriptions that enrich the content and facilitate scholarship. Through the DLME, Qatar National Library develops, enhances and makes available digitized cultural heritage content from its collections, including the Heritage Library.

Other collaborating organizations and institutions on the DLME include the Antiquities Coalition, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Stanford University Libraries, Princeton University Libraries, Harvard University Libraries and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

For more information, please visit dlme.clir.org

Digital Library Federation (DLF)

Qatar National Library is an active member of the DLF, a global organization comprising 185 institutions committed to building and improving digital librarianship. The invitation-only membership comes in recognition of the Library’s ongoing commitment to the digital preservation of Arab heritage and culture.

For more information, please visit www.diglib.org

World Digital Library

Qatar National Library is an active participant in the World Digital Library (WDL), an international initiative of UNESCO and the Library of Congress that acts as a digital portal for material from the world’s leading libraries and institutions. The Library's support of the WDL has increased the preservation of Arab and Islamic heritage content regionally and globally, and to promote scholarship about the region and its culture and history. This collaboration has also resulted in an increase in Arabic language content on the web.

For more information or to browse the portal please visit: www.wdl.org