Cataloguing and digitisation of the Ali-Reza Rahbar Collection
The project
East, the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt (ULB) is in charge of another project for the supply of academic literature from which Iranian studies in particular can benefit throughout Germany.
Funded by the DFG, the ULB is taking care of the indexing and digitisation of the extensive private library of the Iranian-born scientist Ali-Reza Rahbar. Within the framework of a donation, approx. 4,500 Persian monographs and approx. 80 Persian journals were transferred to the library’s holdings in Halle.
With the completion of the project in 2023, these valuable sources for research into the cultural and religious history of modern Iran were made available for scientific use.
Value added for research worldwide
An added value for research worldwide is the digitisation of the copyright-free parts of the collection. These are to be made available via the repository Share_it / MENAdoc be made available in Open Access.
Cataloguing is carried out with indexing according to RDA rules and, in addition to the transcribed information on persons, title and publisher, also includes information in the original language (Persian). In the process, DNB standard data is edited, supplemented or newly created. This mainly concerned authors and/or politicians of Iranian origin. However, geographical names, Persian-Muslim dynasties or dervish orders were also specified.
Project closure 2023
A total of 3,728 titles have been added to K10plus as part of the DFG-funded project "Indexing and Digitisation of the Ali-Reza Rahbar Collection" at the ULB Saxony-Anhalt. Of these, 56 were journal titles and the rest are dominated by monographs. Only less than 20% of the monographs contained duplicates, which have been removed, and more than 72% of the monographs catalogued as part of the project had never before been recorded in K10plus. This corresponds to 2,687 volumes out of a total of 3,672 titles (excluding journals and duplicates).
These are on the Discovery system MENAsearch on the following page.
The monographs mainly cover the following topics from the FID acquisition profile:
"Iranian History and Politics", "Iranian Literature", "New Persian Literature", "Islamic Philosophy", "Islamic Religions", "Islamic History", "Islamic Mysticism" and "New Persian Language".
It contains more than 200 (auto)biographies and accounts of historically significant Iranian personalities, which deal primarily with the last Iranian dynasties of Pahlavi and Kajars, and are thus of great professional relevance for Iranian studies. More than 160 monographs in the collection deal with ancient Iranian religions such as Zoroastrianism. In addition, the collection contains approximately 70 Persian dictionaries and other reference works that have long been out of print and whose importance for Iranian literary research is estimated to be very high.
As part of the project, more than 2,000 standardised records were newly created or supplemented and/or corrected at the ULB Saxony-Anhalt. Most of these were Iranian authors, especially from the 20th century, and/or historical personalities from Iran (approx. 92%), Afghanistan (approx. 5%) and Kurdish regions of Iran (approx. 1%) as well as records for Iranian geographical names, Persian-Muslim dynasties, important historical events in Iran and Iranian dervish orders. They can be accessed via MENAsearch within the Rahbar digital collection.