Qatar signs its mark in a funding project

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Qatarfunds 8.7 million pounds project to make approximately 500,000 pages from the East India Company and the India Office archives available along with manuscripts.

According to Britain-based Art Newspaper, Qatar is funding a 8.7 million pounds project to make approximately 500,000 pages from the East India Company and the India Office archives available along with 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts through the online collection of the British Library in London.

The project aims to “to place Qatar at the center of Gulf history studies,” Qatar Foundation Chairperson Sheikha Moza bint Nasser said.

In a press release, the British Library said it hopes the digitalization of maps, photographs, manuscripts and letters will reveal the “forgotten history of the British involvement in the “forgotten history” of British involvement in the Gulf region. Explanatory text on the materials will also be posted, in both English and Arabic.

The project will create 43 jobs. The team will work in partnership with the Qatar National Library, according to Art Newspaper

British-Qatari cooperation

The project is a result of an understanding agreed to in 20120 by the two British and Qatari libraries that included plans to work with other archives and institutions across Europe and the Gulf, according to Art Newspaper. “This is still in scope for later in the program,” a spokesman for the British Library said. Qatar is also a major sponsor of the World Digital Library, a project run by UNESCO and the U.S. Library of Congress, which works to put historical documents online.