Qatar Digital Library as a Platform for Digital Repatriation of Qatar’s Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Digital repatriation is a process in which cultural heritage objects, physically located outside of countries or communities of their origin, are “returned” where they belong in a digital form. The aim of this paper is to present challenges related to digital repatriation, basing on the experiences of Qatar National Library. Qatar’s complex history caused that its tangible heritage is distributed in over a dozen countries on at least three continents. The library undertakes a number of efforts to locate and digitize such heritage materials, in order to present them online in a digital form and preserve for the future. The main online platform for that is Qatar Digital Library, which is described in this paper from organizational, technical and end-user perspectives.