ISIS expands Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Collection with New Entries
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Alexandria, 18 January 2005–In the course of preserving the heritage related to the modern history of Egypt, the International School of Information Science (ISIS) of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), has been engaged in the documentation of the vast collection of documents pertaining to the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Provided by the Nasser Foundation, the entire collection is presented in a web-based interface with full-text Arabic and English search in both meta data and content.
The website (www.nasser.org) facilitates browsing of the collection through display of the various items as well as provision of full text and morphological searching, thus presenting rich information for both researchers and the public.
The collection has recently been expanded to include a collection of handwritten documents including the President’s personal correspondence with family and friends, lectures, drafts, personal notes and other relevant documents. The majority of the documents are being published for the first time. The collection currently includes 596 documents under 145 topics.
It also contains Abdel Nasser’s writings, including 3 books: Philosophy of the Revolution, President Abdel Nasser’s Diary during the Palestinian War and On the Way to Freedom which he began as a high school student and which won first prize in the competition held by the Supreme Council for Arts, Literature and Social Sciences. This is in addition to 138 poems written about Abdel Nasser by different poets for various purposes.
Over 1400 national songs which emerged during Abdel Nasser’s reign and were related to major events in Egypt and the Arab region are on the site. The songs represent Abdel Nasser’s effect on the culture of the region, addressing issues such as the revolution, nationalization of the Suez Canal, agricultural reform, the High Dam, the Yemen War and Arab nationalism.
The website has many links that ease the access to the information needed by the website visitors. There are links to Gamal Abdel Nasser speeches, movies, documentaries, songs, poems, as well as some of the newspaper articles of Mohamed Hasanein Heikal.
The mission of ISIS is to be the focal point where scholars from around the globe will group to study and develop new technologies in the field of information. The school will act as an incubator for digital and technological projects promoting and nurturing innovations, which view the encompassing aims of the BA as an end goal.