The BA joins the Digital Library Federation
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Alexandria, 30 May 2005—The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) joined the Digital Library Federation (DLF), 20 May 2005, as its first Strategic Partner from outside the USA and Europe (after the British Library), the first in the Middle East, and the second outside the USA. This will allow the BA to participate in the world-wide effort of developing and promoting strategies and standards for creating and maintaining sustainable and scalable digital collections.
David Seaman, Executive Director of the Digital Library Federation, stated, “I am delighted that the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has accepted our invitation to join”. He added, “We are a fast-moving consortium of very active academic digital libraries and the addition of this remarkable Egyptian library will enrich our collaborative work and inform our world view of digital library endeavors. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is already working closely with DLF member institutions: it is a contributing member of the Million Books Library led by Carnegie Mellon, and Yale has just announced new funding for collaboration with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to digitize early 20th century journals.”
Michael A. Keller, Stanford University Librarian and President of the DLF’s Board of Trustees, added, “The Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s digital library initiatives extend the leading edge of digital librarianship by the creation of new professionals, by experimentation, by portal development, and by the addition of content, which includes the digitization of 15,000 Arabic books, annually, the development of the Digital Library of the History of Egypt, and the scanning of numerous image collections.”
“The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is proud to be a member of the DLF,” says Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. “My colleagues and I look forward to working with the DLF in laying out the foundations for the digital library revolution of the new century and to find ways in which this will benefit all of humanity.”
As a partner, the benefits for BA will include the increased use of, improvement and broadening of access to their collections and it will serve as a platform for further collaborative programs. For the end-users, the DLF service will provide new and dynamic research tools providing easy integrated access to digital resources. This opens new possibilities for innovative research.
The DLF, founded in 1995, is a partnership organization of academic libraries and related organizations that are pioneering the use of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and services. With 33 partners and 5 allies, the DLF provides leadership for libraries by identifying standards and "best practices" for digital collections and network access; coordinating research and development in the libraries" use of technology; and incubating projects and services that libraries need but cannot develop individually. The DLF has been operating under the administration umbrella of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), but is now being separated and is operating as an independent U.S. not-for-profit corporation.