The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL) and the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) are collaborating on a digitization project "Preserving and Creating Access to Unique Afghan Records".

ACKU's collection is the most extensive in the region covering a time of war and social upheaval in the country, with most of the documents in the principal languages of Pashto and Dari. The collection contains information related to history, social, economic, and cultural heritage of Afghanistan. This project is being funded from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). About 2,300 titles (about 236,000 pages) are currently available.

News: In April 2012, about 1,000 titles (100,000 pages) have been processed and ready for ingestion

Recommendations: Some manuscripts of some poetry books such as Haft Akhtar (Seven Stars) by Abdi Beig Shirazi that is from important diwans in Persian literature. There are some respectful books on literary criticism, like Tahlil Ash‘ar Nasir Khusro (The Analysis of Nasir Khusro poems) by Mahdi Muhaqiq, which is a very important in the history of books ever written on Nasir Khusro poetry. The historical books, magazines and newspapers are also rich sources of important information about the socio-political history of Middle Eastern countries, especially in regard to international relations between Afghanistan and other countries.

> > More about this exciting project!