Initiated by an actor in the private sector, this project intends to provide a catalogue of public data freely available on the web, and to make them accessible through one portal: Open Data Tunisia. All documents and reports come from Tunisian Authorities and Institutions in charge of public services. If the version currently online is experimental (beta version), improvements should be implemented very soon.
The World Oral Literature Project is an urgent global initiative to document and disseminate endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record. The Project supports local communities and committed fieldworkers engaged in the collection and preservation of all forms of oral literature by providing funding for original research, alongside training in fieldwork and digital archiving methods.
For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. Local languages act as vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, but the oral traditions encoded within these languages become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted. These creative works are increasingly endangered as globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. Of the world’s living languages, currently numbering over 6,000, around half will cease to be spoken by the end of this century.
Islamic Studies students may be interested in two collections:
– the historical collection of Iranian Literature collected by Susan Wright. The audio material in this collection was recorded between 1974 and 1976 in Iran as part of field research for a D.Phil. Details of the collection can be browsed here
– “Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo” containing video & audio recordings of 6 muezzins reciting the adhan (Muslim call to prayer), as well as audio recordings from 10 locations in Cairo representing the city-wide call to prayer (over 30,000 muezzins reciting each of the 5 times per day). These are accompanied by photographs taken at the recording locations. It is accessible here.
Since Feb. 1st, we have a trial access to AskZad database for one month: it is a large Arabic resource that includes newspapers, theses, articles and e-books.
Try it http://www2.askzad.com/e_genpages/login.aspx?u=McGill&p=Canada and let us know what you think!
Ībrāhīm Mütefferiḳa established the first printing press in the Muslim world in the 12th A.H./18th A.D. century. It was based in Istanbul and helped propel a revolution in the manners of book printing in the Muslim world.
McGill University holds a number of these incunabula. Recently a digital project was completed and 14 works are now available via the McGill library catalogue.
One may follow the following link to access the materials: Ibrahim Muteferrika incunabula.
Enjoy!
The database “Middle Eastern Manuscripts Online, Pioneer Orientalists” is on trial for us until November 11, 2011! It may interest some of you as it entails digitized Arabic manuscripts from the Leiden University Library:
– The collection of Joseph Justus Scaliger (d. 1609)
– The collection of Franciscus Raphelengius (d. 1597)
– The collection of Jacobus Golius (d. 1667) which is particularly famous for its manuscripts on Islamic science.
It’s accessible at the following address: http://www.primarysourcesonline.nl/c55/
Check it out and give us your feedback!
Fihrist provides a searchable interface to basic manuscript descriptions from some of the major manuscript collections in the UK. With the continuing contribution of manuscript records from UK libraries, Fihrist aims to become a union catalogue for manuscripts in Arabic script. Check it out!
The Arabic manuscripts collection of the Wellcome Library (London) comprises around 1000 manuscript books and fragments relating to the history of medicine. For the first time a website enables a substantial proportion of this collection to be consulted online via high-quality digital images of entire manuscripts and associated rich metadata.
These manuscripts are part of the Wellcome Library’s Asian Collection, which comprises some 12,000 manuscripts and 4,000 printed books in 43 different languages. The Islamic holdings include Arabic and Persian manuscripts and printed books, and a small collection of Ottoman manuscripts and Turkish books. The core of these collections relates to the great heritage of classical medicine, preserved, enlarged and commentated on throughout the Islamic world, stretching from Southern Spain to South and South-east Asia.
Al Islam is the official website of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community – an international Islamic organization. It provides access to many newspapers and magazines freely accessible online.
Check it out!