Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library, 1475-1900

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Overview

Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library, 1475-1900 is a full-text searchable digital collection of early printed books in Arabic script. This collection covers Islamic and Christian literature, law, science, mathematics, astrology, alchemy, medicine, geography, travel, history, chronicles, and literature. It also includes European translations of Arabic works and Arabic translations of Christian religious works.

The collection will be available in three modules:

Module 1: Islamic literature, Christian literature and Islamic law
Module 2: Sciences, History, Geography and Periodicals
Module 3: Literature, Grammar, Language, Catalogues and General Works

Provider:

Gale [1]

Posted:

Feb 16, 2015 8:56am

Updated:

Oct 25, 2018 2:53pm

Source

CRL reviews are based on independent research. Information is researched by CRL staff and other specialists at CRL libraries. See CRL Review for additional source notes.

Details

Collection Content

Subject Areas:

Arts and Humanities

Science, Engineering and Technology

Social Sciences

Resource Types:

Books

Dictionaries

Laws and regulations

Major Languages:

Arabic

English

French

Italian

Latin

German

Russian

Swedish

Greek

Dutch

Hebrew

- Denotes data sourced directly from publisher

Specifications

Metadata:


MARC records available	Yes
Creator of MARC records	OCLC for most collections, Backstage Library works for a small number of earlier produced GPS collections
Source for obtaining MARC records	some expanded records built from existing records in film, fiche or physical form, however most created new for the GPS product, and ECCO totally rebuilt by the ESTC MARC Record Committee
Fee for MARC records	Varies by collection, by number of records
Subject authorities used	Library of Congress Subject Headings
Name authorities used	Library of Congress Name Authority Headings

Technical Platform:


Browser compatibility	All
Authentication options	Geo, IP, IP Proxy, User/Pass
Archiving solution (master files)	Master images and XML files archived on external hard drives as well as redundant highly available online storage
Archiving solution (derivative files)	Portico archives both the derivative product images and source XML
Available in web discovery tools	Yes
Open url target	Available for all archives on GPS cross search https://support.gale.com/technical/openurl [2]
Federated searching, z39.50	Selected archives https://support.gale.com/technical/sru_supported_databases [3]
Local host option	Not available
Usage stats based on Counter code	Yes

Interface Tools:


		Comments
Full text displayed	Yes
Page images	Yes
Color images	Yes - most collections
Search full text	Yes - most collections	Manuscript content is in conversion for this process, but presently is metadata searchable
Advanced search	Yes
Search within results	Yes
Limit results by dates and/or document types	Yes
Display highlighted search terms	Yes
Display snippet (search term in context)	Yes
Relevance sorting	Yes
Save searches	Yes
Download PDF	Yes
Download HTML	Yes	XML scanned OCR content can be downloaded
Print page	Yes
Print full document	Yes
Export citations	Yes
Annotation tools	Yes
Cross-product searching	Yes	Yes, via the Gale Primary Sources (formerly Artemis) platform
ILL permitted	Yes	In smaller, controlled amounts
Text/data mining permitted	Yes	Available for most GPS collections - Gale is yet formatting and converting content to make this available for all collections - such as manuscript options and other challenging XML conversation collections
Restrictions on use	No	Use allowances are standard to the industry - for educational purposes with no re-purposing for commercial applications, etc.

Terms and Provider Details

Terms:


		Comments
Subscription option	No subscription options
Purchase option	Yes - one-time purchase
Multiple year payments option	Yes
Maintenance fees	No
Annual supplement	No, except for 4 collections - see comments	The Economist \| The Times Literary Supplement \| US De-Classified Documents \| Smithsonian + Air&Space Magazine Archives
Hosting charges	Yes, unless hosting cap levels is met	Hosting Cap - a set monetary level of aggregate existing fees from past GPS collection purchases that precludes any future additional hosting fees being acrued by the purchase of other Gale Primary Sources collections - many CRL accounts are capped and receive no new hosting fees when they acquire additional GPS collections
Archiving	PORTICO	All GPS collections are included in Portico, and GPS buying institutions need not participate in Portico to benefit from any "trigger event" to have continued access to GPS collections they purchased

Provider:

Gale [1]

Website:

http://www.cengage.com/us/ [4]

Main Address:

27500 Drake Road

Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535

United States

CRL Review

Collection Content:

Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library is a collection of titles cataloged in A. G. Ellis’s Early Arabic Printed Books in the British Museum, London, 1898-1901 (3 vols), with additional material from the India Office Library. Included are works printed in Alexandria, Baghdad, Beirut, Bulak, Cairo, Constantinople, London, Lucknow, Paris, St Petersburg, Tunis, Vienna among others. The majority of works are in Arabic text, though some content is bilingual or in other languages.

Gale represents that the collection will represent the entirety of unique titles and editions in the Ellis bibliography. Gale projects that the collection will encompass 7,000 titles (in 12,000 volumes), and will include approximately 2.5 million pages.

Early Arabic Printed Books: from the British Library will be published in three parts.

Module 1: Islamic literature, Christian literature and Islamic Law (December 2015)
The Quran, traditions (Hadith), tafsir, theology, prayers and sermons, traditions -interpretation, biographies of traditionalists; bibles, commentaries, Christian teaching and practice, liturgies, prayer books; law, fiqhand statutes, fatwas and rulings

Module 2: Sciences, History, Geography and Periodicals (March 2016)
Natural history, medicine, physiology, other science, classical sciences, philosophy, logic, politics, ethics, mathematics, arithmetic, geometry, mechanics, astrology, chemistry; history, early caliphs and conquests, modern history, genealogy, biographies; geography and travel, regional geography, topography, and periodicals

Module 3: Literature, Grammar, Language, Catalogues and General Works(December 2016)
Folktales, pre-Islamic literature (Antar, BaniHilal, Imru'lqays), Islamic poetry and prose (al-Burdah), poetry and prose (maqamat), Kalilahwa-dimnah, Luqman, proverbs and sayings, Thousand and one nights, later literature, poetry and prose, general literature; language and lexicography, dictionaries, grammar, syntax, rhetoric, 'ilmal-bayan, catalogues, manuscript catalogues, etc

Gale has expressed interest in working with other libraries to identify additional Arabic primary sources and are planning future releases.

Delivery:

Some of the features included are: searchable Arabic text with right-to-left read, a user interface for right-to-left navigation and reading, searchable metadata in Arabic and European languages and international citation tools.

According to the publisher, investment in OCR technologies has improved the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of printed Arabic to approximately 75% accuracy. At the "Gale Symposium: Middle East" (2015), the company confirmed that Gale is not manually correcting OCR, but is adding rich metadata to records to assist in discovery.

MARC records (5000+ titles) are available for loading into local catalogs to increase discoverability. Author/Title information are rendered in original scripts (Arabic, Cyrillic, Syriac, Greek, Bengali, etc) as well as in Romanized format. Users have reported that some records were found to have missing romanized title information.

Users report several instances where images have been redacted from the online publications. Gale reports this is in response to cultural sensitivities (such as the prohibition of visual depictions of Muhammad). Purchasers may acquire the missing images from Gale to make available locally, though the images may not be integrated into the product.

Sources

Sources for this review include information publicly posted or obtained directly from the publisher; data collected by CRL staff and specialists at CRL libraries; and examination of the digital collection when possible. Other sources are noted where cited. CRL continues to gather additional information on this resource and to solicit critical assessment.

CRL Offers & Status

Status	Current	Description
CRL Flagged	no	Potential interest to CRL community
Offer Pending	no	Currently a candidate for CRL offer
Active Offer	yes	Currently offered for purchase or new subscription
Trial Access	no	Available for trial
Renewal Offer	no	Currently offered for renewal
Expired Offer	no	Past offers
Inactive / Declined	no	No longer under consideration by CRL
Reviewed by CRL	yes	Evaluation available by CRL and community

The complete offer and activity details for this resource are only available to CRL members.

Appendix

Title List:

Early Arabic Printed Books [5]

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