The Emirate of Arab Culture: A City of Libraries

Abstract

This article presents Sharjah’s cultural vision of becoming an Emirate of Arab Culture and a city of libraries through a documentary profile of Sharjah Library, which was inaugurated during the celebrations of Sharjah as the Arab Cultural Capital in 1998. The text highlights the library’s institutional and cultural character through its location in the university area, its large physical space, and its architectural design that combines Islamic and modern features. It also emphasizes the scale of its collections and organizational philosophy, which integrate a general public library with a wide range of specialized libraries in a single knowledge environment intended to balance comprehensiveness and specialization. In this sense, the article portrays the library as a major cultural infrastructure capable of housing more than one million books and serving as a symbol of Sharjah’s broader knowledge project.

The article further outlines the library’s halls and services in considerable detail. It refers to general subject halls as well as specialized sections devoted to the UAE, Gulf studies, childhood studies, education, computing, communication, theatre, business administration, arts, library science, environment, Palestine, women’s studies, architecture, engineering, sports, and Arabic and foreign software resources. It also notes the presence of a children’s library, Internet halls, a recent periodicals hall, seminar and exhibition halls, and a bookbinding workshop, in addition to photocopying, lending, and public access services. Taken together, the article presents Sharjah Library as a modern central library that combines public reading, research support, information services, and cultural programming within the Emirate of Sharjah and the UAE more broadly.