Movie at the Library: Nov. 28th, 2012

Video coverage of New QU Library Inauguration last week

I personally like the classic red convertable in the TV studio. Nice touch.

Opening Ceremony, new QU Library

The Library was opened in January of 2012 but today we held an opening ceremony. The library looked good with the new art, exhibition miscelleny, and furniture finally installed. The Qatari corner looked especially exceptional. A few pictures:

Collection Development Adventures in Islamic law sources

Our Qatar University Comparative Law Conference concluded and was a success. The Conference was the first of a kind in the Gulf region and many scholars, especially Canadian scholars, participated. See the review of the conference. 

I attended one day of the conference, and from the discussions and papers presented generated many new acquisition titles for the QU law collection. Great efforts are being undertaken to make Islamic law sources more accessible in translation. I particularly want to recommend the Islamic law bibliography developed by the UK Centre for Legal Education and the Hadith bibliography at the University of Michigan. The mixture of primary and secondary sources in the area is rich.

Mosque at QU

New library exhibit hall

The last phase of the new Qatar University Libraries is the opening of the exhibit hall. Please come and see the first exhibit!

World Intellectual Property Organization depository libraries program at QU

I spent my first day back in the office hanging my degrees and opening mail. Two months of business is pending but manageable. One large box greeted me and I opened it to see seven books on intellectual property from WIPO. One of the things I want to do this month back as the QU law librarian is organize our WIPO depository material. Qatar University Libraries are part of the World Intellectual Property Organization depository libraries program. Materials include many monographs, reports, periodicals, electronic documents on CD/DVD delivered up on regular basis (essentially every new WIPO publication).

This is a task I discovered late last year but was unable to find time to understand the requirements of the depository program or propose a process. Luckily, I have some experience in UN materials as I was part of a depository UN library at NSU law library for some years in Florida. I also know it is time consuming.

I discovered in my first searches that 31 WIPO depository libraries have been created in 20 countries. I started searching for examples of WIPO organization at other libraries. For example, the National Library of Belarus is another WIPO library and is storing documents in a reading room dedicated to international organizations. In another example, Azerbaijan State Economic University joined WIPO’s depository libraries in 2012 and created a WIPO Reference Center. Both are good models.

Loving FCIL.

Ending Ceremony spectacular - World Book Day

The ending ceremony for QU led World Book Day was today and over 300 young people participated and some got awards. The US and Japanese Ambassadors attended to present book prizes and donate to the Japanese and American Corners in the QU Library. A book swap and reception followed with the Qatari Minister of Culture, President and Vice President of QU.

April 23rd is World Book Day because many famous authors died on that day, including in the year 1616 Cervantes, Vega and Shakespeare. Many other authors were born on April 23rd, for example Nabokov.

Read books! This month I am reading The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj by James Onley, from our new books collection.

Here are some pictures from the World Book Day event:

Dr. Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad presenting a book prize

Qatari Minister of Culture (in white),
US Ambassador (in blue) and Japanese Ambassador (middle)

Katia Medawar, Head of Public Services

QU Libraries improving and growing

As the year comes to an end I am proud of what the library team has achieved. Qatar University library services and collections grew significantly the academic year ending May 2012. Additionally, the move to a new facility helped improve average faculty satisfaction with library services and collection from 48.2% last year to 68.4% this year. The numbers for student satisfaction increased from just 31.1% to 61.6% in one year!  Here are some highlights I pulled from the Library Annual Report:

·         Staff includes four MLS-qualified professional librarians  and 14 staff with B Sc / BA- in library and other social sciences

·         Uploaded a total of 75,000 e-books and 1400 e-reference sources into the  library’s  online catalog (OPAC)  and made these resources accessible from on-and off-campus

·         Uploaded (4,500) Arabic records from Arabic Union catalog

·         Added an average of 2,610 new titles per month (including 155 law titles)

·         8 New Databases and Electronic Journals added

·         2,933 books catalogued

·         Now over 20 Lib Guides with  20,651 hits on the web from students and faculty. Many such  guides are in both Arabic and English.

·         Conducted 18 library tours of the new library for 277 participants

·         Answered 7426 reference questions

·         Books circulated 52,640

·         Gate count 84,993

·         Inter library loans 25

·         LexisNexis usage per month: 3,037

·         Westlaw International usage per month: 2,283

·         English print books: 55,420

·         Arabic print books: 45,296

QU: World Book Day

QU library, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, is celebrating the World Book Day event (April 23rd and 24th) through a variety of activities and workshops.

The Instructional Services Department is conducting a workshop entitled "Differentiating between types of sources (popular versus scholarly)."

The workshop will take place in Ibn Khaldoon Hall as follows:

April 23 (10:00 -11:30) for female students 

April 24 (10:00 -11:30) for male students

You are highly encouraged to participate in this activity. If interested, kindly contact Mr. Nasser Al Saari at nasalsaari@qu.edu.qa

A certificate of attendance will be distributed.

We look forward to your participation!

Event's Details: http://bit.ly/Iog5WW

Qatari Practice Materials

Developing the law collection works best when driven by patron suggestions. For example, yesterday I gave a library tour and info session on law resources to a law school class taught by Dr. Melissa Deehring Montouché, director of the new Externship Program . Melissa asked the students to submit lists of resources their employers used or wanted them to know about for legal practice in Qatar. The list turned out to be a composite picture of what resources lawyers think are important here. The offices QU law students are externs in include firms, courts, and government departments such as The State of Qatar Attorney General,  Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority,  Sultan Al Abdulla & partners,  Patton Boggs LLP, Al Tamimi LLP, Clyde & Co. LLP, and Qatari Diar among others.  The list is a great resource for me as most of the ideas for collection development I have gathered so far are distinctly academic and offered by College of Law professors.

The top four resources listed by the QU externs turn out to be a rich combination of primary & secondary sources with an emphasis on practice materials:

·         ‘IBA Newsletters.’ Publications from the International Bar Association got several, independent mentions as sources of value. Interesting to me as I had never thought of them previously as essential and we do not provide access currently. This is a secondary source I will attempt to add to the collection.

·         ‘The Qatari Commercial, Criminal Law Codes, Qatari Labor laws.’ Multiple requests for reliable access to the primary Codes of the country. I recommended the Gazette as the official source, and databases like Egyptian-based  Eastlaws for quality electronic scans of the originals. Also, parts of Qatari codes are offered in translation, such as labor laws at natlex. ICT Qatar is planning a full legal portal to primary laws to be introduced later this year, but as of now the most effective reference tool to obtain these materials may still be the telephone to call the local authority or the Gazette /Department of Opinion & Contracts for copies.

·         ‘Westlaw, Westlaw Gulf, LexisNexis.’ Westlaw got more requests than Lexis on the extern resource list. Westlaw International is a leading database and recently was joined by Westlaw Gulf to focus on the GCC region. I ran a trial subscription to WG and the College of Law faculty reported little depth beyond the UAE legal resources so we declined a subscription. The Westlaw rep from Dubai assured me they are adding more content to other GCC countries so this is changing. I was surprise that no students listed LexisNexis Middle East database, which we did purchase, so it seems that the marketing is not as successful for Lexis as Westlaw.

·         ‘The Brief.’ Two students listed this new source to me. The website describes the focus: “The Brief is the first magazine covering Middle East law as it applies to business.”  This the Gulf edition of the ALB series owned by Thompson Reuters.

The Library will be adding resources and titles offered according to the Collection Development policies. I look forward to any additional titles!

New Books display

The new Qatar University Library ground floor circulation desk is home to the 'new books' display. Many new books are added every week. Please come check them out!

Collection Development

Our library move is complete and it is time to buy law books. The new library can accommodate a million volumes and we have a tenth of that currently. I worked all morning on a listing of books from Cornell University Law Library that I will be placing a QU purchase request for through Dawson, UK.  The slow mail from London means they will arrive in six weeks if I am lucky.

The list of books comes directly from Cornell and is part of a much larger book list. I am in the process of benchmarking our QU law collection against Cornell’s law collection with the help of Thomas Mills, Head of Collections at the Cornell Law Library.  Thomas and I have been working together and his team was kind enough to supply their collection list to us. The focus is on international law secondary sources for the last five years.

After speaking with Amrita, QU Head of Collections,  I am staggering the order process so that books can be acquired in manageable chunks rather than all at once. This assists in the cataloging, shipping, stacking of the books. I have approximately 35 titles in today’s ‘basket’ and  will place the request for approval later today or tomorrow in Dawson.

I think I will have almost two hundred titles, four hundred volumes,  based on the Cornell list in total divided into three or four baskets over the next two months. The QU library has a Men’s and Women’s collection so I buy two of everything in most cases.

I need more!

New QU Library Pictures

The Library is almost opened and we are getting ready for students to return to campus next week. The old Men's and Women's Library are closed. Here are some preview pictures from February 15th, 2012. Cheers.

This view makes it all come together!

Library Move Pictures

The move into the new library is going well . The two Hallett library move specialists from Ohio are great and the boxes are holding together too. All the special carts and boxes were shipped from the US. The Arabic collection is going first as the local movers understand the move process in that language and order much better than the LC move. For example, the order the boxes are loaded with books is the inverse in the Arabic collection than the boxes must be packed in the LC order!

Some pictures from today:

Reference 2nd floor

The American Resource Center at Qatar University Library

The American Corner at QU Library is a special collection partly funded by the US Government since 2006. Americana titles in Jazz, Hollywood lore, US history, economics, and education are frequent subjects sent to us from the US embassy in Doha, Qatar. I learned there are more than 400 American corners in libraries across the world part of the Bureau of International Information Programs at the Department of State. My contact at the US Embassy here in Qatar with Praveen Menon, IRC Director , Public Affairs Section, was constructive and I am now being sent US Government documents and popular culture material. The purpose of the program is to ‘promote American voices’ at schools and colleges internationally. American corners cover the Globe and I noticed ‘Lincoln Corners’ in two libraries I visited in Malaysia recently under the same program. We will be expanding the American Corner in the new QU library building.

QU Library Special Collection – 2011 المجموعات الخاصة

New Qatar Library almost completed

The new library at Qatar University is almost complete. I took a tour today and the interior is ready for the books to move there starting January 19th. Services should start in February. Here are my pictures.

Existing Women's Library

New Library Drawing

Library staff on tour of New Library

Atrium

Light

New Stacks

IALL Conference

Next month is the annual meeting of the IALL. This is the International Association of Law Libraries and this year the conference is being organized at the University of Malaya. The meeting is located at a very good place for me as the Law School and Library at the University of Malaya can serve as a model for Qatar University College of Law and Library. The Faculty of Law at UM was the first college of law in the country of Malaysia, supports multi-lingual collections and patrons in English, Arabic, Bahasa Malaysia. The library has a large collection of Islamic Law. International law collections with focus on oil and gas, arbitration, and ADR are also applicable as models to Qatar University College of Law and library. The University of Malaya Tan Sri Professor Ahmad Ibrahim Law Library developed a functional/multilingual website and blog. Like the QU law library, it is also a part of the Main Library of the University. 

I look forward to the IALL meeting and will apply what I learn to the development of library services in Qatar.

New Library building

The new library will be completed at the end of this year and will be the largest building at Qatar University with a capacity for a million volumes. The second floor will be the male library. I have completed one hard-hat tour of the construction site with other librarians. Wow.

Here is the link.

Databases

One of my priorities is the creation of a comprehensive College of Law collection development plan. I am assessing many law databases with a Middle East focus and am on the phone with vendor representatives mainly in Europe who visit Qatar or can provide a webinar and limited database trial. Many of these are new to me. It is fun and here is a partial list that I get to test drive:

·         Eastlaw http://eastlaws.com/En_Default.aspx (just to balance Westlaw!)

·         Justis to www.justis.com   (for full text case law from around the world) or www.justcite.com   (for the legal indexing tool that will cite international use of a case)

·         Kotob Arabia e-Library http://www.kotobarabia.com/   (first e-book vendor for Arabic titles, some 334 in law) and Almanhal with 224 e-books in Arabic in law

·         LexisNexis Middle East Law www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/middleeast (attempting to cover  the GCC and translating materials starting with the UAE; QU may partner with this one for Qatari content)

·         LexisNexis Juris Classeur www.lexisnexis.com/fr/droit (all French navigation and content; many of QU law faculty speak French as a second or third language)

·         Westlaw International  http://www.westlawinternational.com/Welcome.html (useful for international common law research and Journals)

Arabic writing often does not display correctly in HTML formatting for the web and so databases with .PDF versions of documents are highly favored.