Washington, DC, August 21, 2018—The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has named five curatorial advisors to the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME):
- Saif Abdullah Al-Jabri, director, Information Center, Sultan Qaboos University Library, Oman
- Najwa Adra, anthropologist, Yemeni Intangible Cultural Heritage
- Mariette Atallah, head of Collection Development Department, Jafet Library, American University in Beirut
- Ryder Kouba, digital collections archivist, American University in Cairo
- Mariam Zaki, information specialist/librarian and PILOT coordinator, Cairo Urban Resource Library (CURL) at Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training & Environmental Research (CLUSTER)
The curatorial advisors will help identify and prioritize records for federation during the continuing design phase of the DLME platform. This expansion is expected to launch in 2020. The curatorial advisors will help ensure that the DLME includes representative records from all phases of the region’s history and all major languages, and that images are available in as many multimedia formats as possible. CLIR Distinguished Presidential Fellow Elizabeth Waraksa is coordinating the group’s work.
The DLME is envisioned as a non-proprietary, multilingual library of digital objects providing greater security for, preservation of, and access to digital surrogates of cultural heritage materials.
“The appointment of curatorial advisors marks a critically important phase of the DLME, a project conceived as a dynamic digital environment in service to the sustainability of and access to the cultural heritage of the Middle East,” said CLIR President Charles Henry. “These distinguished advisors will assure that DLME content, tools, and applications align with and exemplify regional priorities and aspirations.”
CLIR and its Digital Library Federation (DLF) program are working with technical partners at Stanford University to develop the DLME platform, with grant support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project builds on experience gained in developing the DLME prototype, announced in January, which was supported with funding from the Whiting Foundation, and on regional partnership building and exploration of governance models in an earlier planning phase supported by Mellon. Among CLIR’s key collaborators are the Qatar National Library and the Antiquities Coalition.
For more information on the DLME, visit https://dlme.clir.org/.
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an independent, nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance research, teaching, and learning environments in collaboration with libraries, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning. CLIR promotes forward-looking collaborative solutions that transcend disciplinary, institutional, professional, and geographic boundaries in support of the public good. Among CLIR’s programs and a core DLME contributor is the Digital Library Federation, an international network of member institutions and robust community of practice advancing research, learning, social justice, and the public good through the creative design and wise application of digital library technologies.
CLIR is grateful to staff at the Qatar National Library for their assistance in producing the Arabic translation of this announcement.
