Romanization
The WU Libraries Catalog supports non-Latin text, however, many records are only searchable in Latin characters according to the American Library Association- Library of Congress Arabic romanization tables. Diacritics are not necessary for catalog searches.
Subject heading searches will be in English, and can be limited to Language-> Arabic in Advanced Search.
Arabic Names and Titles
Al-
It is not necessary to include Al- at the beginning the "last" or "family" name of an author search, unless:
- This is how the author is commonly referred to in English
- The name traditionally refers to a specific group of people or tribe
If an author commonly publishes in English, they will be searchable by the name as spelled on those publications.
Example author searches: Saʻdawi, Nawal, Khalifah, Sahar, Al-Asad, Mohammad, Hakim, Tawfiq
Al- is always spelled with "L" regardless if the following letter is a sun or moon letter.
Catalogs
Library of Congress subject headings are used across several catalogs, including WU Libraries, HathiTrust, and Worldcat. Use subject searches in combination with keywords and language limiters (see the Books tab for example searches) in multiple catalogs for best results.
- Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library (Yale)AMEEL is a Web-based portal and a digital collection of information for the study of the Middle East, including its history, culture, development, and contemporary face. Currently, AMEEL holds approximately 350,000 pages of full text, indexed and searchable in the language of publication including Arabic and Western scripts.
- Center for Research LibrariesOnline catalog of the holdings of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which includes over 5 million items including U.S. and international newspapers; foreign journals and dissertations; government documents, and a wide range of other primary source material. Request items through interlibrary loan with note that you found it through CRL.
- DAR (Bibliotheca Alexandrina)Search the digital collections of the modern Library of Alexandria, including over 17,000 Arabic books in free full text.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowHathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. Over 10 million volumes have been added to the library; of which more than 3.3 million are available full text.
More info about HathiTrust
- NYU Arabic Collections OnlineA publicly available digital library of public domain Arabic language content. ACO currently provides digital access to 11,564 volumes across 6,813 subjects drawn from rich Arabic collections of distinguished research libraries.
- WorldCat This link opens in a new windowInformation about books, journal titles, videos, and materials in other formats owned by more than 15,000 U.S. and foreign libraries. DOES NOT INCLUDE JOURNAL ARTICLES.
- WorldCat (FirstSearch Interface) This link opens in a new windowInformation about books, journal titles, videos, and materials in other formats owned by more than 15,000 U.S. and foreign libraries. DOES NOT INCLUDE JOURNAL ARTICLES.