international database of Middle Eastern resources
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a grant to the Yale Library for a collaborative database project that will make available to the public important Middle Eastern resources.
Titled Project OACIS (for Online Access to Consolidated Information on Serials), the database is being funded under the federal department's "Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access" program. The three-year grant will provide $145,000 in the first year and comparable amounts thereafter. The Yale Library is adding its own staff and technology resources as part of the cost-sharing arrangement.
Project OACIS will create a freely accessible, continuously updated listing of Middle East journals and serials, including those available in print, microform, and online, explains Ann Okerson, associate university librarian and principal investigator for the endeavor.
The listing, which will be available on the World Wide Web, will identify libraries that own the materials as well as exact holdings -- initially for Arabic- and English-language titles and then for an ever-expanding group of Middle Eastern languages. As it develops, Project OACIS will also serve as a gateway for those wishing to access those serials. The records will be searchable in both Roman and non-Roman alphabets.
Project OACIS is international in scope, notes Okerson. While initial titles reports will be contributed by partner libraries in the United States, the database will expand to include titles and holdings of institutions in Europe and the Middle East. Teachers of foreign languages and librarians in Middle Eastern countries will be asked to offer input on design and functionality
Yale Library staff -- along with faculty of the Middle East Studies Council of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies -- have been developing Project OACIS over several years, in a commitment to provide access to the literature of this region of the world for a wide range of educational, government and commercial institutions. The aim, noted Okerson, is to develop a better understanding of the varied economies, politics, languages and cultures of the Middle East.
Yale was one of the earliest institutions of higher education to offer formal study of the Middle East, and the University library's collections and other educational resources are considered among the strongest in the world.
Leading the project along with Okerson will be Kimberly Parker, head of the library's electronic collections, as co-principal investigator and technical director; and Simon Simon Samoeil, Near East curator, as project manager and director of networking and relationships.
Information about the OACIS project is available at www.library.yale.edu/oacis/.
For additional information, contact Ann Okerson at (203) 432-1764 or ann.okerson@yale.edu; Kimberly Parker at (203) 432-0067 or kimberly.parker@yale.edu; Simon Samoeil at (203) 432-1799 or simon.sameoil@yale.edu.
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