Tag Archives: Gulf Region

Arabian Gulf Digital Archive

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The Arabian Gulf Digital Archive (“AGDA”) is an online archive that showcases historical and cultural materials from the Arabian Gulf. The contents span two centuries and offer an insight into the past with some material previously unseen by the general public.

The National Archives of the United Arab Emirates (“NA”) collects documents of special historical value to the UAE, Gulf Cooperation Council states and the Arabian Peninsula, both from within the UAE and from abroad. The original documents often exist in archives not located within the Gulf region, making access difficult for those who don’t know where to look. AGDA presents electronic copies of these records along with tools to search, tag and download them.

AGDA contains, among other things, letters, memos, transcripts, photos and official correspondence from leaders and governments that shaped the events of their time.

AGDA is open and free to view and use by anyone. It makes primary source material, with descriptions in both Arabic and English, available to students, scholars, researchers and any interested members of the public.

  • It holds easy-to–use search filters, each with its own extensive list of additional search terms
  • It enables additional search functionality based on a selected date range
  • All search results can be downloaded, shared, bookmarked with any comments saved.

 

 

  • Results pages can be viewed as a single or multiple images, or as text and in various viewing formats
  • It is designed to aid accessibility for all users with tools to manipulate size, color and positioning of images and text
  • It is simple and intuitive functionality. It is also optimized using external search engines

 

 

Tips for Searching

  •     Use the keywords most relevant to your search, e.g. United Arab Emirates
  •     Use quotation marks to search for exact phrases, e.g. “United Arab Emirates”
  •     You can perform wildcard searches by using an asterisk ‘*’ (e.g. tele* will match documents containing telegram, telephone and telegraphic).
  •     Boolean operators: “united OR union AND arab emirates”
  •     Searches in English or Arabic will deliver identical results regardless of the language of the interface.

The Arabian Gulf Digital Archive website, “The Site” is wholly protected by copyright and is the property of the National Archives of the United Arab Emirates. To learn more, click here.

 

Qatar Digital Library

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Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is a growing repository for over 500,000 historical and cultural records of the Gulf and wider region. The Archives is available online and includes wide range of materials: maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualized explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic.

The QDL was made possible through a Memorandum of Understanding on Partnerships between Qatar Foundation, Qatar National Library and The British National Library. The aim of this partnership is to make a world-class resource freely available for everyone, for general audience and academic researchers.

The site was launched on 27 October 2014. According to Cogapp, an industry-leaders in producing software for online archives and museums who designed and developed the software; the interface is user friendly and it is accessible across multiple devices, including mobiles, tablets and desktops. Everything is shareable on social media. All items can be zoomed to explore incredible details. It also allows the user to conduct a highly filterable search; 150 facet options are available to refine the search. The site and content meet archival standards and accessibility criteria.

The repository also include 147 articles to explore, all grouped under Articles From Our Experts which can be filtered by topic, geographical location and time period. Switching from Arabic to English is possible through the language tab located on top of the page.

“This is going to result in a whole new generation of historians, a boom in the historiography of the Gulf. This is profound; this moment right now is a milestone in the history of the region.”— Dr James Onley, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern History, University of Exeter
“Students, scholars – whether here, in the Gulf region or indeed anywhere on the planet – will be able to explore this material, find new learnings from it, make new connections and make new discoveries.”— Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library