About

The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) offers free and open access to the rich cultural legacy of the Middle East and North Africa by bringing together collections from a wide range of cultural heritage institutions. Developed by an engineering team from CLIR and Stanford Libraries, the platform federates and makes accessible data about collections from around the world. The platform is built upon the open source Spotlight and Blacklight frameworks, and supports presentation of resources compliant with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) using the Mirador viewer.

DLME founding organizations

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an independent, nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance research, teaching, and learning environments in collaboration with libraries, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning and serves at the incubator of the DLME. Among CLIR’s programs and a core DLME contributor is the Digital Library Federation (DLF), an international network of member institutions and a robust community of practice advancing research, learning, social justice, and the public good through the creative design and wise application of digital library technologies.

The Antiquities Coalition is leading the global fight against cultural racketeering: the illicit trade in antiquities by organized criminals and terrorist organizations. The Coalition’s innovative and practical solutions tackle crimes against heritage head on and include a focus on inventory, cataloguing, documentation, and digitization of collections as preservation efforts that enhance security and sustainability.

Key partners

Funders

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Digital Library Federation, and Qatar National Library have generously provided funding for the Digital Library of the Middle East. We are grateful for their support.

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