Dar Almandumah held its 4th Annual Forum in Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt, from April 27 to 30, 2016. The meeting was attended by nearly seventy deans, library directors, and representatives of Gulf and Arab library unions and consortia, under the theme “Experiences of Library Consortia for Electronic Resources in the Arab World: Experiences and Aspirations.” The forum highlighted several successful library consortia experiences in the Arab world, as follows:
- The Egyptian Knowledge Bank experience, presented by Prof. Hoda Abou Shady.
- The Saudi Digital Library experience, presented by Dr. Abdulhamid Al-Sulaiman.
- The Egyptian Universities Libraries Consortium experience, presented by Prof. Khaled Abdel Fattah.
- The Jordanian Center of Excellence experience, presented by Mr. Awad Othmaneh.
The presentations received remarkable engagement because of the valuable insights and exchange of useful expertise they offered in this field.
The forum also presented the latest developments and updates in Dar Almandumah’s databases, which the company had worked on during 2015, as part of its ongoing commitment to continuously developing its databases in terms of both content and the technical aspects of various search systems. أبرز ما تم عرضه included the following:
- Updating database content to exceed 700,000 research papers, studies, and academic theses, representing growth of more than 24% over the previous year.
- Integration with EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), enabling users to search Dar Almandumah database content alongside various international databases.
- Search capability through API or Z39.50, a system that enables unified searching across multiple online databases through a single User Interface.
- Integration with EndNote & RefWorks, one of the reference management systems used during research preparation.
- Embedding bibliographic data in real time during download Real-time, so that bibliographic information is included in every copy of the materials available within Dar Almandumah’s databases.
- A Plagiarism detection system, which will allow comparison of scholarly works published in Dar Almandumah’s databases to detect cases of academic plagiarism.
- In addition to many other achievements across several different areas.
The forum received very positive feedback from all guests, as attendees expressed their satisfaction and admiration for the level of organization and the distinguished scholarly content presented during the event.
