Digitising Islamic Resources a report by the University of Exeter

In February 2008, Exeter University Library was awarded £34,900 by theJoint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of behalf of HEFCE (HigherEducation Funding Council for England), to carry out a survey into UserRequirements for Digitised Resources in Islamic Studies.A team led by Paul Auchterlonie and Ahmed Abu Zayed worked on the project(named DigiIslam) between March and May, using a mixture ofquestionnaires, focus groups, telephone interviews and bibliometricanalysis. The resulting report has now been sent to JISC.JISC will study this report and will pass on any recommendations to HEFCE,who will be announcing their wider strategy for Islamic Studies in HigherEducation later this summer.The report is available at the DigiIslam Project website at :http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/digiIslam/documents/DigiIslamReport.pdfIt is a substantial document, but the Executive Summary andRecommendations can be found on pages 5-11.For details of all the other reports which have been commissioned by HEFCEsince June 2007, when Islamic Studies was designated a Strategic Subjectby the UK Government, go to the HEFCE website (subsection Islamic Studies)at :http://www.hefce.ac.uk/aboutus/sis/islamic/

Paul Auchterlonie