Qatar National Library (QNL) continued to increase its membership and the number of books checked out in 2021, despite the pandemic-related restrictions.
The Library registered 14,288 new members and received 287,642 visitors in 2021 although several services were provided digitally and access to the building was restricted. Users have checked out 183,143 books and have accessed 39,351,822 pages online, according to the Library’s 2021 annual report.
QNL is arguably the newest national library of the 21st century and hosts over one million books. It also houses a rare collection in the Heritage Library and provides free access to resources on the Qatar Digital Library.
“From its conception, Qatar National Library has always been invested in leveraging technology to deliver our services to the public. As such, in 2021, in the face of the global pandemic and with restricted access to our physical site, the Library was able to pivot digitally to continue to serve our users without disruption.
"The Library has been steadily building up our digital collection over many years, which has enabled access to a diverse variety of materials for research, leisure and learning,” QNL Executive Director, Tan Huism, said in the report.
The library hosted 655 events in 2021, of which 614 were online. These were attended by more than 28,000 participants. During the pandemic, the library also began offering virtual tours for school groups, hosting 70 such groups in 2021.
Heritage Library collection at QNL includes rare and valuable manuscripts, documents, books, journals and periodicals in Arabic and other languages, as well as maps, atlases, globes, historical photographs, and instruments and tools related to travel.
Together, these items document the history of the region and its people, the evolution of ideas over centuries, and the interplay between the Middle East, the West and the East.
The Heritage Library continued to add items to its collections through 2021, bringing the total to 215,201.
The library’s Digital Repository offers users worldwide free access to digitised items from Heritage Library collection, as well as some selections from local partners.
The database allows researchers to browse primary source materials online, providing a valuable resource for scholars of the Middle East and Islam.
There were 197,484 unique users of Digital Repository in 2021. Of them, over 19,000 were new users.
The Qatar Digital Library (QDL), a partnership between QNL, the British Library and Qatar Foundation, reached a major milestone in 2021 with the upload of the two millionth digital image to the platform.
QDL has become one of the region’s most used digital libraries, with 297,373 unique users in 2021, bringing the total to more than two million unique users from over 165 countries and 18 territories across the globe since it was launched in 2014. With travel restricted, the QDL became a lifeline for scholars.
QNL has registered 180,123 members and 2,006,306 visits since its opening in 2017. It has loaned 1,975,748 books and has recorded more than 64 million digital interactions.