JISC

In June 2007, the UK Government designated Islamic Studies a strategically important subject and asked HEFCE to develop a programme to support this field. As a consequence, JISC issued a call for a review of user requirements for digitised resources for researchers and teachers within higher education working in the field of Islamic Studies in December 2007.

Executive Summary

For the purposes of the Project, Islamic Studies was fairly broadly defined and included Islamic History, Islamic Art and Architecture, Islamic Music, Islamic Law, Islamic Philosophy, Islamic Science and Medicine, Islamic Finance and Economics, Islamic Sociology and Anthropology and Modern Islamic Thought and Politics. The Project focussed geographically on the Middle East, but included researchers working in other areas of Islamic culture such as South Asia where possible.

Aims and Objectives

• Landscape existing digitised resources for Islamic Studies
• Identify gaps in the provision of digitised resources in Islamic Studies
• Establish criteria to prioritise the potential materials and/or collections for digitisation

Methodology and Implementation

• An online questionnaire was set up on the Project website and 145 academics, researchers, librarians and archivists in 35 institutions were contacted by email. 53 people completed the questionnaire, a response rate of 36.5%
• Focus Group was set up drawn from academics, librarians and scholars from the UK Islamic Community and met on April 30th at JISC Headquarters in London
• Telephone interviews were set up with several academics who were unable to attend
  the Focus Group
• Reading lists were sought from UK institutions which teach substantive courses on Islam, Islamic Studies and related subjects. In addition three libraries were asked to provide lists of the most heavily used books in Islamic Studies. These lists were then analysed to determine which textbooks were the most popular across a wide range of institutions, and whether they were already available in digitised format and at what cost
• All UK theses completed during the past ten years were analysed in order to show trends in current research and to determine which areas were attracting the largest number of students
• Gateways and portals to Islamic Studies were examined by using existing resources and an annotated inventory of the most significant was compiled. The web was also scrutinised in order to ascertain the number of gateways offering access to digitised primary texts in Islamic languages, and any to discover whether technical limitations existed which might hinder their use. Information was also collated on digitised catalogues of Islamic manuscripts and on current Islamic digitisation projects.

Output and Results

Use of Resources

Nearly all the respondents already used online resources in Islamic Studies (90.6%), with the main purpose of this use being research (92.1%), although use of these resources for teaching was also high (73.7%). The most heavily used resources for research were current online journals and journal backsets (e.g. JSTOR) = 94.7% of respondents (of which 68.4% used this resource frequently), followed by online reference works in English = 88.9% (of which 52.8% use the resource frequently), primary texts in translation = 75.6% (of which 27% frequently), and primary texts in Islamic languages = 72.2% (of which 25% frequently). Resources for teaching followed a similar pattern.

Access to Resources

Regarding access to various kinds of resource, four out of five respondents had access to current journals online and journals backsets, while seven out of ten were able to use major online reference works, and these three categories were by far the most highly rated. (70% of all respondents rated them as of high importance for their teaching and research, compared to 23.1% for e-books and 32.5% for any kind of resource in an Islamic language). Cost was give as the principal reason for institutions not acquiring any particular resource.

Resources Currently Unavailable Online

Looking at resources currently unavailable online, English-language research monographs were given the highest priority for digitisation (53.8%), mainly because many academics either were unable to borrow books to use in their office or at home, or because their libraries did not hold the required book. Other significant areas were bio-bibliographical reference works (43.6%), translations into English of primary texts (41.0%), Islamic manuscript catalogues (35.9%) , primary texts in Islamic languages (38.5%), current editions and backsets of periodicals in English (30.8% and 28.2% respectively), and backsets of periodicals in European languages (30.8%).

When asked to assign a priority to making individual resources digitally available for teaching (book, periodical title, reference work, etc.), some respondents considered open (i.e. free) access to resources such as the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Encyclopedia of the Qur'an and Esposito's Oxford Dictionary Dictionary of Islam as top priority, although the majority chose individual textbooks or major works of research.

Weight Attached to Different Areas of Islamic Studies

Regarding the relative importance of different areas of Islamic Studies, the traditional staples of Islamic Studies dominated the survey, namely Islamic history (50%), Qur'anic studies (47.4%), Islamic law (42.1%) and Hadith studies (34.2%), but the relevance of Islam in the modern world is highlighted by contemporary Islamic thought (44.7%) in third position, and the importance attached to Islamic/Islamist politics (23.7%) and Islamic sociology and anthropology (28.9%). Given the relatively small numbers of specialists in these fields, it is significant that Islamic art and architecture, Islamic science and medicine (both 18.4%) and Islamic finance and economics (15.8%) were rated more highly that Sufism (13.2%) and Shi`ism (10.5%).

Use of Websites, Gateways and Portals

The use of websites was very high - 94.7% of respondents used websites produced by Islamic organisations in English frequently or occasionally, for example, but no single gateway or portal stood out as particularly significant. There was general agreement that archiving websites in Islamic studies is important (81.6% considered this very or fairly important).

Reading List and High-Use Book Survey

The High-Use Book Survey showed little correlation between the most heavily used books in Islamic Studies in the libraries of Exeter, Leeds and SOAS. One high-use title is shared between Exeter and SOAS, and one high-use title between SOAS and Leeds, and only three titles are shared between the 63 most heavily used books in the three libraries and the 29 most common titles in the reading list survey.

Well over 50% of the books in both the Reading List Survey and the High-Use Book Survey are currently not available in digital form. The results of these surveys show the grave difficulties in deciding which books to make available for free distribution, and it is not recommended that JISC support an Islamic E-Books Observatory project.

Survey of UK and Ireland PhD Theses

The number of PhD theses awarded in the area of Islamic Studies from 1906 to 2006 is around 2000 theses, of which almost half (860) were awarded between 1997 and 2006. During this ten year period, 97 higher education institutions in the UK and Ireland awarded theses in Islamic Studies, although almost half of these (374) were undertaken in just ten universities. Just over 50% of the theses awarded by the top ten universities (374) fall into six main subjects namely, Islamic Sociology/Anthropology including Gender Studies (50), Islamic Law (44), Islamic History (37), Islamic Politics (28), Islamic Finance (20) and Study and Documentation of Muslim Communities in the UK (20).

Outcomes

• Landscape about how academics, researchers and librarians working in Islamic Studies in UK higher education establishments use existing online resources for teaching and research
• In-depth information about what are perceived to be the gaps in online provision in Islamic Studies and recommendations as to how to fill these gaps
• The creation of a list of the most popular textbooks used by a representative cross-section of UK universities, with indications of which books are already available in digital format
• A survey of recent UK doctoral dissertations in Islamic Studies to ascertain trends in current research, so that any digital projects can be targeted to have maximum relevance
• An inventory of existing portals for Islamic Studies, libraries of online primary texts, digital Islamic manuscript catalogues and Islamic digitisation projects to be used as the basis for a national gateway to Islamic resources
• Recommendations on potential projects regarding digital Islamic Studies assets

Summary of Recommendations

Recommendation 1

The creation of a National Gateway to Islamic Resources, including a gateway to primary texts, a full digitised set of UK Islamic manuscript catalogues, electronic versions of doctoral dissertations undertaken on Islamic Studies in the past the years, and an open-access repository for e-prints in Islamic studies.

Recommendation 2

A feasibility study should also be conducted into the creation a corpus of interactive online education materials, which could also be hosted by the national gateway

Recommendation 3

Continuation of the subsidies for major online works of reference in Islamic Studies. Consideration should also be given to increasing the subsidies to make the works more affordable, and to subsidising new digitised reference works in Islamic Studies as they become available.

Recommendation 4

The archiving of the websites of UK Islamic organisations, as an aid to scholarship and a means of preserving the heritage of the UK Muslim community.

Recommendation 5

Subsidising the acquisition of an online collection of research monographs in Islamic Studies, should such a collection be developed by a commercial organisation. It is not recommended that JISC should fund the digitisation of such material itself.

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