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By Cogapp on
The Qatar Digital Library site is a resource for academics and others interested in the history of the Gulf region.
The site comprises two main parts:
- the archive contains free-to-use primary source material: hundreds of thousands of high-resolution scans of historical documents and their associated metadata, as prepared by experts at the British Library.
- articles from our experts contains hundreds of illustrated essays on all aspects of Gulf history, and provides context and background to the raw material available in the archive.
The site is responsive, and fully bilingual in Arabic and English (see for example, the homepage in Arabic). Users can switch language on any page by clicking the name of their language in the top nav.
Why Drupal was chosen:
The site is fully bilingual in Arabic and English, and one of the primary reasons we selected Drupal was because of its excellent multilingual support.
A second factor was the excellent integration with third-party systems. In this case, Apache Solr, which we use not only to search and index Drupal content, but also to search, index and store the structured data for hundreds of thousands of historical documents.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):
About the project
The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is revolutionising the way that people study and understand the history of the Gulf region. A wealth of archive materials that were previously unavailable online can be now be accessed by a worldwide audience.
The new portal is the result of a partnership between the Qatar National Library, which is part of the Qatar Foundation, and the British Library. Cogapp designed and developed the software for the portal on behalf of the partnership and launched it in October 2014 after more than three years' work. It provides access to a growing digital archive, currently over 500,000 records, in Arabic and English, for academics and casual users alike.
Making the history of the Gulf accessible
A leading example of a new type of online archive, the website makes scholarly content available to a wide audience thanks to an easy to use, non-technical interface with a powerful image viewer.
The responsive design means that users can explore Gulf history and Arabic science in a way that works best for them: whether on mobile phones, on tablets or desktops, they can explore maps (past and present); over 25,000 medieval manuscripts; handwritten documents; photographs; official papers; newspapers; video; audio; and contextual pieces. Content dates from the 11th century to the mid 20th century.
The development of the portal
The British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership have created a video, Launching the Portal, which tells the story of the development of the portal. See
www.bl.uk/qatar
Our approach
Cogapp carried out user research in Doha, Qatar and in the UK to inform the development of the site. A prototype version of the site allowed for user testing and further iterations to ensure that the site meets the needs of the people who are going to use it.
"Cogapp has worked iteratively and closely with the project team at the Library. Together we have created a powerful and complex system and yet presented it to the user in an intuitive and engaging manner."
Neil Fitzgerald, External Technical Product Delivery Manager, British Library
Website features
Responsive design: the new site is fully responsive, which means that content is accessible across multiple devices, including mobiles, tablets and desktops.
Bilingual: available in both Arabic and English.
Highly filterable search: over 150 facet options to refine your search.
Simple to navigate: objects that are housed within often complex hierarchies are displayed in a simple to navigate way.
Zoomable: all items are can be zoomed to explore incredible detail, offering unprecedented access.
Free and shareable: material can be used and reused for free, and everything is shareable on social media.
Expert context encourages onward journeys: contextual articles tell the story behind the primary source material. These use text, images, video hosted on YouTube and audio on SoundCloud. Onward journeys are encouraged and the rich media has a life outside of the site as well as in it.
Open architecture: allows for the addition of material from new sources over time.
Swathes of rich content: in the future, hundreds of thousands more artefacts will be added using the powerful back-end system that Cogapp created. The digitised items and associated metadata are saved in to the Library systems, and uploaded to a server as an archival information file in bulk, where our software takes over, presenting the swathes of rich content on the front end of the website.
Meeting archival standards: The site and content meet archival standards, with a METS descriptor using common metadata profiles including Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and PREMIS. It also meets accessibility criteria: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA. Archive images are dynamic and are served using the IIIF standard to allow full user-control (see www.qdl.qa/en/image-options for details)
TODO system architecture
Press coverage
The site was launched on 27 October 2014 has featured in international media, including Huffington Post, BBC, International Institute For Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and Art Daily. Highlights include:
- BBC News Magazine: Tales from the India Office
- BBC Arabic’s Afaq programme
- The Guardian: Historical views of the hajj – in pictures
- Times of Oman: Now, access Omani history online
Accolades
"This is going to result in a whole new generation of historians, a boom in the historiography of the Gulf. This is profound; this moment right now is a milestone in the history of the region."
Dr James Onley, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern History, University of Exeter
"Fantastic new Qatar #DigitalLibrary by @BritishLibrary and @QF. Bi-lingual #library of Gulf history & Arabic science"
Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, @edvaizey on Twitter
"We are diving in history and looking around. It’s like a door to the nineteenth century."
Anas Hasanain, Student at Qatar University, Doha
"Students, scholars – whether here, in the Gulf region or indeed anywhere on the planet – will be able to explore this material, find new learnings from it, make new connections and make new discoveries."
Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library
Technical specifications
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen:
Due to the bilingual nature of the site, we made heavy use of modules associated with multilingual content: Internationalization, Localization and many of the Translation modules.
The next key requirement was to use Apache Solr and associated modules in order to interface with the millions of records that we store in Solr (see e.g. the clickable facets on the left-hand side of the search results page)
We used the Lexicon module to provide a glossary, along with brief definitions appearing in-context when terms are mentioned in articles or in archival descriptions.
Finally, we used the Varnish module to ensure that caching worked correctly on the cluster of web application servers.
Community contributions:
TODO Arabic translations
DrupalCamp
Organizations involved:
Team members:
Project team:
Cogapp
- Tristan Roddis
- Steve Norris
- Sam Murray
- Andy Taylor
- Eleanor Rudge
- Adrian Hindle
- Jon White
- Chris How
- Gavin Mallory
Qatar National Library
- Krishna RoyChowdhury
- Mark T. Paul
- Claudia Lux
British Library
- Neil Fitzgerald
- George Weyman
- Oliver Urqhuart-Levine
- Richard Gibby
- TODO More here?
Sectors:
Education
