Arabic Academic Libraries and E-books: Description and Analysis of the Current Practices
This paper attempts to investigate the current practices of some selected academic libraries from the Arab World on the delivery of E-books to their academic user communities. E-books like any other networked information services are very recent phenomenon in the Arabic academic libraries. They have largely remained as outsourced library services mainly delivered by means of English language. The current paper collects data from the academic library websites to investigate the extent to which Arabic academic libraries have been collecting and managing repositories of e-books in their websites. The paper also uses e-mail questionnaire to collect relevant data from librarians in those selected libraries. Findings will accumulate and reveal preliminary data on how e-books holdings differs from site to another among the Arab States and how the overall practices are near or far from what has been experienced in the developed countries. It is to be hoped that the findings of this paper would pave new avenues for future research and potentially form the basis for related future planning and decision making by Arab academic libraries.
Keywords: E-books, Academic Libraries, Arab World, Collection Development
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Ali Saif Al Aufi
Assistant Professor, Department of Library and Information Science |
PHD from Curtin University of Technology, 2007.
Currently working as assistant professor at the department of Library and Information Science, Sultan Qaboos University.
Ref: B07P0069