Primary Source Repositories: Middle East

Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is a publicly available digital library of public domain Arabic language content. ACO currently provides digital access to 9,187 volumes across 5,668 subjects drawn from rich Arabic collections of distinguished research libraries. Established with support from NYU Abu Dhabi, and currently supported by major grants from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, and Carnegie Corporation of New York, this mass digitization project aims to feature up to 23,000 volumes from the library collections of NYU and partner institutions.

"The revolution established a space for ingenuity that has astounded us, the Syrians, before even making its mark on the rest of the world, and we wonder, where had all this talent in satire, art, and innovation been?
The outburst of the uprising against oppression and tyranny brought on a surge of these remarkable, latent energies, the spontaneous and the organized, in a way never before seen in all of Syria’s years marked by repression and injustice. History relays similar experiences. This project aims to archive all the intellectual and artistic expressions in the age of revolution; it is writing, recording, and collecting stories of the Syrian people, and those experiences through which they have regained meaning of their social, political and cultural lives."

In response to the tragic displacement of people and losses of life in conflict zones, and to ongoing threats to the cultural heritage of the Middle East through destruction, looting, and illegal trade, the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) proposes to federate Middle Eastern collections from around the world, creating a publicly accessible, seamlessly interoperable digital library of cultural material.

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.