Partnerships
Local Partnerships
As an active member of the Qatar community, the Library has many partnership agreements with local educational, governmental and cultural institutions. These collaborations facilitate knowledge exchange, education advancement, research, skills development, joint events and exhibitions, and cultural preservation.
Memoranda of Understanding
The Library has signed Memoranda of Understanding with numerous regional and international institutions to encourage the digitization and sharing of historical materials, the sharing of Library expertise, and the development of Library staff. These include the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the National Library of the Netherlands, the National Archives of the Netherlands, the National Library of China, the National Library of Azerbaijan, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, the Ottoman Archives, the National Library in Turkey, and New York University.
International Partnerships
Through collaborative partnerships with national libraries, archives, universities and other institutions, Qatar National Library is helping to increase global access to cultural and heritage content. These relationships also better enable researchers and scholars from around the world to access the Library's historical, heritage and cultural items relating to Qatar and the Gulf.
Partnership with The British Library
The British Library-Qatar Foundation Partnership was launched in July 2012 to digitize the British Library's collections relating to the history of Qatar and the Gulf, and a selection of medieval Arabic scientific manuscripts.
The most visible outcome of the partnership is Qatar Digital Library, one of the world’s largest online repositories devoted to Middle Eastern history and culture. Qatar Digital Library provides free online access to a wealth of historical source materials on the politics, people, places, trade, culture and customs of the Gulf region and the wider Middle East. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, visual arts and much more, complete with contextualized explanatory articles and links, in both English and Arabic.
The ongoing partnership has digitized almost 2.5 million pages, which are now freely accessible to users worldwide. Qatar Digital Library currently attracts an average of 200,000 unique users and more than 2 million page views a year.