Monthly Archives: August 2017

Open Access Newspaper Archive: القدس = al-Quds = al-Kouds (1908-1914)

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Al-Quds open archive is the result of a collaboration between the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University (CPS)  and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Ramallah. Since its foundation in 2010, to honor the legacy of Professor Edward Said who taught at Columbia University for forty years, the Center for Palestine Studies has been involved numerous projects including the publication of the Jerusalem Quarterly, a film based project called Dreams of a Nation, and Al-Quds open archive.

Al-Quds open archive includes 392 issues published between 1908 and 1914. The Index allows visitors to access the scanned issues by number. Documents first display in a reader, and the PDF file opens when clicking on the pop-out icon located at the top right hand side of the document. Those high definition PDFs can be downloaded and printed.

The website is in English.

A user guide to the Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981

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In 2017, the McGill Library acquired Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981, a database of Primary Source documents examining events such as the Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese Civil War, and the Iranian Revolution. This collection of files from the United Kingdom Foreign Office (i.e. diplomatic correspondence, minutes, reports, political summaries and personality profiles) is a invaluable tool for researchers focusing on the history of the Middle East during the 1970s.

The Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 is available through the McGill Library A-Z database list.

It includes three modules focusing on different time periods:

  1. 1971-1974: the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the Oil crisis
  2. 975-1978: the Lebanese civil war and the Camp David accords
  3. 1979-1981: the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war

An essay introducing this historical period by Professor Michael Gasper, including links to relevant documents within the collection, can be read here.

The Popular Searches page shows a list of most important people, places and topics covered by the documents. A simple click on any name or topic will lead to a list of documents in which they appear.

The collection can also be discovered through the gallery of maps, linking back to the original documents from which they come.

Dreams of a Nation

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Started in the 1990’s, Dreams of a Nation is a Columbia University based archival project aiming at preserving and promoting Palestinian cinema. If the initial collection was only composed of films screened in courses taught at Columbia on Middle Eastern cinema, it has now grown to include hundreds of films, carefully described and indexed on the Dreams of a Nation website. Dreams of a Nation archive and database in this website were sponsored by Columbia University Middle East Institute, and facilitated by dedicated librarians. The website is now maintained by the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.

The DOAN archive can easily be explored by filmmakers or by titles indexed in alphabetical order.

Dreams of a Nation resulted in the organization of two Palestinian film festivals held in 2003 and 2204, and the publication of a book entitled Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema authored by Dr. Hamid Dabashi (Verso, 2006).

As described by Dr Hamid Dabashi, Dreams of a Nation is a work in progress “committed to two principle objectives:

  • expanding and preserving our archive with the goal of making it the largest collection of Palestinian cinema possible–feature, short, and documentary–and (2)
  • providing a solid database documenting Palestinian cinema for contemporary use and for the posterity.”