Of possible interest.
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YALE LIBRARY NEWS RELEASE

   AMEEL - Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library
   Yale University Library
   130 Wall Street
   P. O. Box 208240
   New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8240

YALE LIBRARY SIGNS DIGITAL LIBRARY AGREEMENTS WITH INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

New Haven, CT.  November 2006.  The Yale University Library today 
announced key international collaborations with partners in Egypt, 
Germany, and the Netherlands in two granted projects:  Project AMEEL 
(Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library) and Iraq ReCollection.

Project AMEEL is developing a Web-based portal, which will integrate new 
or existing scholarly digital content covering the history, culture, and 
development in this vibrant region.  The Iraq ReCollection project will 
digitize a select group of the most important scholarly humanistic Iraqi 
journals held by Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.  These digitized 
journals, digitally preserved and accessible via the Internet, will form 
part of the AMEEL electronic archive.  Both projects propose to develop 
"best practices" for scanning Arabic language-based humanistic content and 
to share this expertise with academic libraries worldwide.

* The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria, Egypt) is the modern recreation 
of that city's ancient and formidable library.  Today, the BA is a world 
leader in library and cultural technological innovations and contributes 
its considerable expertise to Yale's digital projects, particularly in the 
digitization of Arabic texts.

* The Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek of Sachsen-Anhalt (Halle, Germany) 
has a long and significant history of contributions to and library 
leadership in Middle Eastern studies.  Halle's university library will 
contribute to the AMEEL portal with digital fulltext materials created 
from printed documents of its Middle East collection and with data from 
its electronic database called ALMISBAH.

* Brill Publishers, founded in the 17th century (Leiden, the Netherlands) 
produces essential scholarly materials concerning the Middle East, 
including the notable Encyclopedia of Islam.  Brill will share its 
metadata holdings with AMEEL, thus expanding searchable information for 
Middle Eastern scholars.

About Project AMEEL:

This grant was awarded under the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI 
TICFIA Program, which fosters innovative techniques or programs that 
address national teaching and research needs in international education 
and foreign languages by using technologies to access, collect, organize, 
preserve, and widely disseminate information on world regions and 
countries other than the United States. 
<http://www.ed.gov/programs/iegpsticfia/index.html>

About Iraq ReCollection:

In response to the damage sustained by museums, libraries, and other 
cultural institutions in Iraq, the National Endowment for the Humanities 
funded an initiative called "Recovering Iraq's Past," to preserve and 
document resources which, because of their intellectual content and 
cultural value, are deemed vital for research and education. 
<http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20051221.html>

For Additional Information, Please Contact:

Ann Okerson
Associate University Librarian, Collections & International Programs
Yale University
130 Wall Street
P. O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240
Phone: 01-203-432-1764
Fax: 01-203-432-8527
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

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