Recently the Middle East Libraries Committee held its annual conference in Berlin, Germany. Dr Jamil Ragep of the Institute of Islamic Studies presented on the ISMI project. ISMI is a joint project between the Institute and the Max Planck Society to digitize numerous manuscripts with a focus on Islamic sciences in the broader definition. Moreover, Jennifer Garland of Blackader Lauterman Library and Sean Swanick of the Islamic Studies Library presented on some of the lacquer bookbinding holdings located in Rare Books and Special Collections. Their presentation focused on the transmission of knowledge in cultural exchanges taking place between Europe and Qajar Iran.

The conference itself was attended by close to 100 librarians from all over the world. Many presentations discussed new and upcoming projects, such as the Amir blog by Peter Magierski of NYU that is focused on collecting Open Access materials. For full details including the conference program go to the Melcom site.