A $1.34 million was granted to the Arabic Collections Online (ACO) by Arcadia, New York University Library announces. The ACO is a project developed in order to provide an open access, digital library of public and free-to-read Arabic Language content.
The ACO is a partnership between New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and New York University (NYU) which began in 2013. The ACO plans on digitizing 23,000 volumes worth of books from NYU and its partners to provide the public with free access to the digitized books – how cool is that?! Currently, around 8,785 volumes have already been posted online, and the ACO expects to reach its 23,000-volume goal by the end of 2020.
Dean Emerita Carol A. Mandel from NYU Libraries says “We are so proud that the work of ACO has been recognized with philanthropic support from Arcadia, a major funder of open access projects. A signature aspect of this project is the extensive copyright research we have done to enable us to bring the greatest possible number of public domain titles into the collection. This generous grant is helping us bring great library collections of Arabic materials to a wide audience, free to anyone, anywhere, with an internet connection.”
The books available for reading encompass a wide range of genres and subjects in fiction, literature, poetry, culture, and society, criticism, and so much more – there is literally something for everyone. This is made possible by NYUs aid in the digitalization of Arabic books from six leading academic libraries: NYU, Columbia University, Cornell University, Princeton University, American University of Beirut (AUB), and the American University of Cairo (AUC), not forgetting the National Archives of the United Arab Emirates.
Audiences of ACO span the globe, with people from Iceland, China, and Vietnam being interested in Arabic material – with the majority coming from the Middle East. ACO welcomes universities, secondary education institutions, as well as Arabic readers to indulge in their rich collection of Arabic content.
All of the books present on ACO range in date, from extremely early materials to prints as late as the 1990s. Nearly all the books made available on ACO are out of print, with some even being rare and fragile.
So, if you’re a Gibran Khalil Gibran fan or even a Taha Husayn fan, go get your read on ACO, you won’t be disappointed.