New York University Libraries Receives $500,000 Grant For Arabic Collections Online (ACO)

From NYU Libraries:

New York University Libraries, a leader in digital library development, today announced that the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York has made a grant of $500,000 to support Arabic Collections Online (ACO), a major project to create a publicly available, digital library of public-domain Arabic language content.

ACO aims to digitize 23,000 volumes from NYU and partner institutions and make them accessible to the public on the ACO website. ACO is a partnership between New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and NYU New York and began in 2013 with funding from NYUAD.

To date, nearly 8,200 volumes have been posted to the site, covering more than 5,000 subjects; 2,000 more have been digitized and are in process. NYU’s Digital Library Technology Services developed and manages the online interface, a web portal accessible around the world. NYU expects to reach its 23,000-volume goal by the end of 2020.
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NYU is coordinating the digitization of Arabic language books from six leading academic libraries: NYU, Columbia University, Cornell University, Princeton University, American University of Beirut (AUB), and American University in Cairo (AUC). The books encompass fiction, poetry, literature, criticism, culture and society, economics, history, law, biography, and Arabic language and grammar.
The books—all in the public domain—range in date from very early materials to imprints as late as the 1990s. Many of the older books are rare or fragile, and nearly all are out of print. ACO ensures that their content is saved digitally for future generations.

Learn More, Read the Complete Funding Announcement
Direct to Arab Collections Online
 

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