eFADA to group UAE's academic e-resources

UAE’s education sector is taking its new role as an emerging knowledge economy seriously.

A consortium of library directors has been formed in the UAE to head a project called eFada, with the aid of Ankabut, the UAE’s advanced national research and education network. The idea behind the formation of this group is to create a shared national knowledge base to support learning and research in the UAE.

As per Ankabut’s website, this goal will be achieved through several initiatives, which includes establishing a shared union catalog, engaging in cooperative collection development and developing a national digital institutional repository. The outcome will lead to savings in the cost of e-resources, expansion of resources available and sharing expertise to promote cost effective, customer driven services.

In an interview with Gulf News, eFada project manager Dr Ahmad Dabbagh said, “Students will no longer suffer from spending hours on researching. Through eFada, any member related to the academic and education field will be able to view several options including how many researchers have worked on a certain topic or how many research papers have been done by others within the UAE or outside.”

The project, started last year, has a long way to go with continued participation from 9 universities currently but Dr Dabbagh has called on more universities to come forward and be part of what is surely to be big step in aiding the country in its goal as a knowledge economy. 

Challenges libraries face in the cyberage

By Omotola Oyebanjo

From moderate beginnings, libraries in the Gulf and Middle East have grown steadily in their effort to meet the demands of readers and researchers in the region. For instance, in Dubai, a modest start of the Al Ras Public Library in 1963 has grown by 2012 to 8 public libraries across the city with about 462,000 books available and an electronic library in Umm Suqeim.

While the libraries in Gulf regions play catch up with the developed countries in terms of technology, they are all one in the challenges they face while meeting the needs of the 21^st century consumer.

1)      Transition to Digital Libraries: According to Dr M.R. Vaseghi, Vice Chancellor of Research & Technology for Islamic Azad University in his interview with springer.com, “The transition of physical libraries to digital libraries is the most important challenge facing universities in the Middle East; all our previous efforts have been focused on creating a physical library, purchasing printed resources and so on.”  This transition is critical in ensuring the continued effectiveness of libraries as the world seeks new and innovative ways to access and share information and resources.

2)      Gap between catching up to technology advancement and savvy users

Librarians are faced with the task of updating themselves to the latest available technology and e-resource platforms to best serve the millennial generation that has grown up with these advancements as part of their daily life. This generation knows how to access the information and wants it fast, but can the libraries match up?

3)      Access to New Resources & Books: The process of ordering new materials for many libraries is very time consuming. It also takes a long time for these books to get delivered causing libraries to function on limited and sometimes outdated resources. The need for dependable suppliers and sellers who will deliver the right quantity on time continues to be an important challenge.

4)      Absence of Collaborative Operations: Many libraries in the Gulf and Middle East work in silos without any collaborative effort. For instance, it is not unusual to find a single University having multiple libraries each servicing its own unique faculty with no collaborative efforts across libraries. This can lead to duplicate purchases or make searching of data difficult as resources may not be pooled across the University.

5)      Difficulty of Sourcing relevant Resources: With the explosion of EBooks and digital resources, libraries are faced with difficulty of sourcing and distributing relevant resources for their faculty and students. This therefore drives libraries to seek out the best sources and platforms from where the most outstanding EBooks can be bought and accessed in order to ensure they meet their consumer’s demands.

On the plus side, with new and innovative resources directed at the education sector, libraries are left with a larger pool of options to add to their virtual bookshelves. Integrating e-textbooks, rented journals and learning videos for school children into the library’s website seamlessly is catching on fast.

It is evident the future of libraries lie in its digital assets where users can have remote access and not in big rooms lined with unending shelves stocked with bound books.


The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to Dibaj

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Summer Offer: Free yoga eBook

This summer we’re giving away one of our eBooks free. We have included a free discount code for you to use at checkout and download the book on any device to read when you like!

Use the discount code USRW6BDC61F5 at checkout and start reading this book for free!

Go to our store to use the code now

Summary of Yoga is a Mantra

A philosophical thought propounded in ‘Yoga is a Mantra’ based on experience and the metaphysical knowledge discovers the matrix of human Existence, Consciousness and its Conditioning. Methodology used for its deconditioning makes this philosophical thought dissimilis not only to achieve awareness for a healthy life but also makes us compassionate towards each other and above all makes us intellegere in our hearts the presence of the Lord/Dominus the creator of all the existence.

The ascetic technique of Kashmiri yoga is a process of transformation of the human body into a cosmic body in which the energy chakras and the veins play a considerable role.

Digital Asset Management and Distribution: Best Practices

A book publishing expo this September will address best practices in digital asset management and distribution.

Publishers seeking new ways to monetize their rich banks of content are often challenged during the execution process by outdated or non-existent archiving systems. Different versions of files including metadata, art and covers, and other valuable content assets all sit on separate computers, in emails, or on servers rather than a central, organized repository. The upcoming Digital Book World Marketing + Publishing Services Expo on September 26 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City will offer strategies and solutions for the critical – and distinctly different Digital Asset Management and Digital Asset Distribution functions. Programs and sponsors will clearly define these practices and guide publishers towards solutions that will help them harness the assets they have and facilitate communication and production workflow. 

Confusion easily arises when publishers use a Digital Asset Distribution system for the Digital Asset Management function, probably tempted to do so because their company doesn’t have a working archive or system – a DAM – in place to manage all of their various digital assets. As a result, publishers send finished final files to their Digital Asset Distribution system and that becomes, by default, the only central place where the files live. That can work as long as nobody needs access to the discrete items that comprise the final product. It invites nothing but frustration for someone looking to repurpose content.

 A robust Digital Asset Management system, on the other hand, is used throughout the editorial and production process and enables publishers to tag and store their content and other digital assets for easy identification and retrieval and for flexible reuse down the line.

Learn more at marketing.digitalbookworld.com

Click here for more information on the conference  

New features on Dibaj

We are constantly trying to improve your experience with us. Our goal is to provide an easy way for you to access e-books and read them offline or online without any hassle.

Take a look below at the new features we've added:

-       -   Online reader will support ePUB 3 as well now

In addition to PDF, you can also read your eBooks in ePub 3 format where they have been provided.

-      -    Advanced filter options on Bookshelf

Users will be able to browse their bookshelf with additional options such as book formats and user defined tags.

-     -     Option to tag titles on Bookshelf

Users will be able to categorize their ebooks on their bookshelf under tags created by them.

Example: Tags like exams or guides.  After this the user can filter their bookshelf to browse according to created tags.

Currently users can purchase a book gaining perpetual access and the option to read online or download it on your laptop, tablet or mobile device to read anywhere.

Use the in reader function of putting down notes or sharing a chapter with your classmate or colleague!

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NEW: Tagipedia, online Arabic encyclopaedia to launch

A search online for his own information led Jordanian businessman Talal Abu Gazaleh to launch a $10 million online Arabic encyclopaedia.

Misinformation of his birth place online led Abu Gazaleh to take on the project to document and make available correct historic and geographic facts amongst other information.

To be launched this year end, Tagipedia allows users to scan QR codes and read the information behind them. Users can even create their own QR codes.

Ghazaleh said, "I see it as a means of building an Arab knowledge society, which is my mission in life....to contribute to the economic and social development of the Arab world."  

IDPF Launches Digital Educational Publishing Workshop

The IDPF is holding a two day workshop to establish a globally interoperable, accessible, open ecosystem for e-Textbooks and other Digital Learning Materials via EPUB 3 and the Open Web Platform.

The workshop will be help on October 29-30 2013 in Boston, USA

The goal of this two-day workshop is to bring together major players of the global K-20 education publishing market – including publishers, educators, platform and solution providers, standardization organizations, content distributors, and accessibility organizations – to help advance the effective adoption and use of e-textbooks and other digital learning materials by improving interoperability and baseline capabilities via standardization. EDUPUB is hosted by Pearson Education, with organizational co-sponsors W3C and IMS Global Learning, and additional corporate sponsors including Aptara and SPi Global.

Digital content in education has the potential to significantly improve learning outcomes. As compared to paper-based textbooks and learning materials, digital content can better support accessibility, adapt to individual learning modes, increase engagement and experiential learning through interactivity, provide immediate assessments and analytics, social connectivity, and potentially reduce costs.

In order to realize these benefits, it is critical to globally enable utilization of digital content that transcends the print-replica shackles of first-generation portable document formats and associated “page flipper” applications. And, such digital content must be usable across many different devices, and in classroom and off-campus environment where data connectivity may be intermittent and slow (so online browser-based delivery, while important, is not always sufficient). Economies-of-scale must be afforded for cost-effectively developing and distributing education content across many different operating systems and devices. Achieving practical interoperability via standardization is a key element of facilitating this.

EPUB, a Web Standards and XML-based format developed by the IDPF, has already been widely adopted as a next-generation standard for e-Books digital publications, including e-Textbooks. The newest version, EPUB 3, is being rapidly adopted by the global education publishing community as the baseline format for e-textbooks, enabling the full power of HTML5 and the overall Open Web Platform for delivering engaging, interactive, media-enhanced reading experiences – offline and online – while also providing sufficient structure to provide practical interoperability so that publishers can create content assets once, and distribute publications to multiple channels and devices.

Despite the promise of EPUB 3, there remain major business and technical challenges in creating and delivering engaging, effective digital education content, some of which could be reduced or removed by further standardization and development of best practices specific to the education market. “Plug and play” systems for content creation, distribution, and reading will accelerate innovation and lower costs.

The focus of this Workshop is therefore to bring global experts together, across disciplines of publishing and education, to advance implementation of EPUB 3 as the standard structured format for e-textbooks and other digital content. The goal of the Workshop is to share knowledge about what’s working, uncover obstacles to more widespread implementation and interoperability, and take steps to remove them in order to catalyze adoption and market growth.