The team of the Specialized Information Service (FID) Middle East, North Africa and Islamic Studies invites more than 30 experts from academic libraries to a workshop. The event will take place from 4 to 5 December at the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt (ULB) in Halle.

The Specialized Information Service is a Germany-wide project funded by the DFG and supervised by the ULB. With its workshop, the FID encourages the exchange of knowledge on the acquisition, digitization and cataloguing of specialized literature in the languages of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region).

Cataloguing literature in Arabic, Persian, Georgian and many other languages is a particular challenge for libraries. Titles and names from the original languages and alphabets must be reproduced in a standardized transliteration.

The Specialized Information Service of the ULB acquires about 6-7,000 volumes per year as well as almost 400 journals and databases from the states of the MENA region and makes them accessible for research in Germany.  With the repository MENAdoc, it makes over 15,000 digitized titles available in open access. The FID team has thus acquired an expertise in cataloguing and digitisation and would like to exchange experiences with his guests from all over Germany, Switzerland and Lebanon.