BA Holds Digitization Training Workshop for American University of Beirut
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Pursuing its mission in disseminating knowledge and sharing its expertise, the BA hosted a group of five ICT and library information specialists from the American University of Beirut (AUB) for the workshop “Digitization: from Thoughts to Implementation”. The workshop was conducted by the BA ICT Sector for five consecutive days from 12 to 16 May 2013 at the Library.
Trainees were introduced to the digitization practices of the BA, and they participated in sessions on digitization standards and techniques, quality assurance in scanning, image processing and OCR, with special emphasis on handling Arabic texts and different kinds of materials, such as newspapers, photos, manuscripts, and others. The training also included discussions on various advanced technologies applied in planning and management. Theoretical presentations and discussions were complemented with hands-on practical sessions. The practical aspect targeted forging the participants’ skills in handling on-the-job details and tweaks in order to maximize performance and quality.
In a parallel track, trainees were introduced to the infrastructure of the BA institutional repository (Digital Assets Repository – DAR), the BA online archiving system, the digital assets factory (DAF) and the digitization workflow developed by the BA. This also involved showcasing a variety of BA digital products, including the largest Arabic digital library worldwide (comprising more than 185,000 Arabic books). The Arabic digital library is part of the BA digital book collection, which currently holds more than 300,000 books in five languages and is associated with an efficient search facility and a multifunctional book viewer. The BA also offers people various other digital library initiatives, such as Memory of Modern Egypt and Wellcome Library Manuscript collection.
The BA has developed a reputation over the past 10 years of being a pioneer in digital library practices, with distinction in digitizing Arabic content—the most prominent and prized outcome of the research conducted in this domain during the past 10 years.
The workshop comes in accordance with the BA mission to offer technical support and training for researchers everywhere. In this framework, the BA ICT Sector has delivered several training workshops on digitization during the past decade, including Digitizing Arabic Text workshop in 2007, in partnership with Yale University; training for Municipal Administration Modernization Syrian team in 2009; and the study tour for Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) in 2010. These workshops were held while ensuring the upgrading of material to showcase the latest state-of-the-art technologies pursued by the BA.