The National Archives Presents Emirates Library Experience to Fujairah Culture and Media Authority
The National Archives Presents Emirates Library Experience to Fujairah Culture and Media Authority
The National Archives provided a delegation from Fujairah Culture and Media Authority with information about the establishment of its library (Emirates Library) and the stages it went through to reach its current technical development and evolution, and became rich of hard and electronic resources of information, which made it the destination of intellectuals, researchers and academics.
The delegation of Fujairah Culture and Media Authority visited the National Archives to benefit from its experience in establishing the Emirates Library in their project to establish a specialized research library to serve broad categories of researchers and academics.
The guest delegation explored the specialized printed and electronic publications held at the Emirates Library, which form integrated packages of sources, references, dissertations, and other Arabic and foreign refereed journals, and on-line e-books and diverse data base subscriptions, important reference books dealing with the UAE's history and heritage, as well as the related topics on the GCC countries and their culture and civilization including biographies and autobiographies, and atlases, including the largest atlas in the world, dictionaries, encyclopedias, original rare books, and Emirates newspapers archive. The sources of information in the Emirates Library are in both Arabic and English languages, with other material in different languages such as French, German, Farsi, Dutch, Portuguese ... and others.
Emirates Library conveyed to its guests its aims in serving researchers, scholars and knowledge seeking students by providing them access to its rich specialized hard and electronic copies of collections. Simultaneously, it offers its services to all clients who approach it, whether internally from the National Archives or externally, it also contributes to the National Archives' community activities, and receives trainees from various entities and specialized institutes to educate them on the applied methods in the various technical and documenting stages. It supports local, Arab and international initiatives, and participates in workshops and awareness sessions relating to libraries and information.
National Archives library briefed its guests on its gift and exchange program with major libraries and information institutions within the UAE and abroad and on aspects of its cooperation relations with many information institutions, nationally, regionally and internationally, in accordance with a policy that aims at raising the awareness of the National Archives and its scientific and research activities, promoting scientific and academic publications and contributing to distributing the National Archives' publications.
The guest delegation visited the library's reading hall, which meets the international standards with the open shelves system providing its clients, users and researchers with all the necessary facilities to conduct their research and studies. The acquisitions are organized on the shelves, according to the US Library of Congress classification system, and arranged by subject matter. It exhibits a number of rare and old books, some of which date back to more than 500 years in special safe cabinets.
The members of the Fujairah Culture and Media Authority delegation praised the National Archives and its great role in collecting and preserving the memory of the nation, and in providing decision-makers, researchers, academics and students with educational services, which promotes its visitors knowledge on the history and heritage of the UAE and the Gulf region. The visiting delegation expressed its admiration and praise of the National Archives' Library that seeks to be the Model specialized library in the region, as well as their aspirations to strengthen cooperation ties with it to benefit more from its pioneering experience since its establishment in the National archives in 1968.
At the end of their visit, the visiting delegation members watched a high-tech 3D documentary film on the UAE's history, present and future prospects at Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Virtual Reality Theatre, and acquainted themselves with samples of historical hand-written documents, photographs, and maps in Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Hall.
