The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is a system developed by ISIS to create and maintain the Bibliotheca Alexandrina's digital collections. DAR acts as a repository for all types of digital material, preserving and archiving digital media, and providing public access to digitized collections. Over 50,000 books and 35,000 images are now available at http://dar.bibalex.org. All out-of-copyright books are available in full for Internet users. For books that are in copyright, Internet users can browse only 5% of the book, but are available from within BA. The DAR system stimulates the like of a library, where you can browse through the books by Dewey Decimal classification, see books that are related to each other by topic or author, and open the book with the book viewer to take a look and explore using its different navigating tools. An interesting feature that can only be accessible in the digital world is a full morphological search of all the books and within their content, with the search results highlighted.

NAMES 1st General Assembly Meeting, 2-3 November 2008

The BA is organizing the North Africa and Middle East Science Centers Network (NAMES) First General Assembly Meeting, 2-3 November 2008. The theme of the Assembly Meeting is “The Role of Science Centers in Establishing Knowledge-Based Societies in the Region“. The Sub-themes that will be tackled in parallel sessions and workshops will be “Networking and Advocacy” and “Effective Non-Traditional Methods of Science Communication”.

NAMES aims to promote best practices, to support effective communication and to strengthen the position of science centers within the community at large.

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