“Emirates Federation Library”… rare collections and knowledge support for writers and researchers

Hazza Abu Al-Rish (Abu Dhabi)
The UAE Federation Library was established in conjunction with the establishment of the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in 1994. It is considered one of the most important specialized libraries in the region. It provides a set of tools that enable researchers to produce knowledge, and provides support to them at the local, regional and global levels, through its collections and resources, which have been collected and processed over more than 30 years.
In building its collections and resources, the library focuses on the United Arab Emirates and the Arabian Gulf region in particular, and the Arab region and the world in general. This relates to political, military, economic, social, legal, and information technology topics, in addition to other knowledge topics, in both Arabic and English.

Cognitive support
Amal Al-Ahmadi, Acting Head of the Digital Content and User Services Department, confirmed that the library’s tasks are to provide cognitive support through analyzing the content of information sources. And linking it to the needs of researchers through the two departments working in it, which are the Digital Content and Beneficiary Services Department, and the Technical Services Department. In cataloging and classifying its holdings, the library follows the International Library of Congress classification system, in addition to the latest automated systems for processing and controlling the library’s holdings. Al-Ahmadi pointed out that the library has witnessed, in recent years, what is known as digital transformation. This has emerged through the exploitation of technology with the aim of covering all operations within the library, starting with creating applications that suit the nature of the work, through training workers to use these applications, and ending with extracting indicators and reports.
Al-Ahmadi continued: The library provides its patrons and members with a variety of services, such as: loan service for beneficiaries; To enable them to use paper information sources outside the library, and the service of responding to beneficiaries’ questions and inquiries, which the library receives via e-mail and phone, and searching the library’s electronic catalog to access data on more than half a million diverse paper books, and the service of viewing specialized electronic resources from within the headquarters. The library, the “Scan to Net” service, which enables beneficiaries to scan parts of paper books, and send them via e-mail in a manner that does not conflict with intellectual property laws, and the “Document Delivery” service for delivering documents via e-mail. The library also provides many specialized services. Which beneficiaries can view through the website https://library.ecssr.ae.

Various collectibles
Al-Ahmadi points out that the UAE Federation Library includes various collections of holdings, including: the Emirati Fathers’ Book Collection, which includes a collection of books that talk about the Emirates’ fathers and sheikhs, the Emirates Books Collection, as the library keeps a copy of every available book that talks about the United Arab Emirates from a perspective. Political, military, economic, literary, social, legal, or other, a collection of maps and atlases, a collection of British documents, and a collection of private collections, which is a collection of rare and old books. The book “Philosophy and Logic” by Al-Isfahani is considered one of the oldest books of these. The collection, dating back to the year 1454 AD, the collection of more than 1,300 publications by the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, and the collection of electronic books: The library has about 20,000 full-text books in Arabic, and provides its visitors with access to about 15,000 books in English.
The library opens its doors to users, including writers, intellectuals, researchers, and visitors, to view the various publications and publications it contains, from Monday to Thursday.