The electronic library at the al-Abbas's (p) Holy Shrine is a source of knowledge for the researchers and students

The electronic library is an extension to the work of the traditional library, as it was introduced to keep up with the accelerated scientific and knowledge development, as result of the successive developments in the field of communications, computers and information technology, so it was necessary to create it for its importance for the researchers and students, because it enable them to access to the information they need anywhere and at any time. Therefore, the al-Abbas's (p) Holy Shrine sought to create an electronic library unit within its library and manuscript house to be a source of knowledge for the researchers and students.

To find out more details about the work of the electronic library, al-Kafeel Network met with its official Mr. Ahmed Majid Abd al-Hussayn who stated: "After the rehabilitation and the opening of the library and manuscripts' Dar of the al-Abbas's (p) Holy Shrine, the attention turned to the electronic library, as a result of the technical developments in the world in the various fields of life, especially the field of communications and information Technology, to be a source of knowledge from the researchers and students. It is one of the effective and basic units that worked to provide -since its creation- electronic information sources from books, research and other sources through the coordination with all knowledge institutions, so as to make them accessible to researchers and students while ensuring the non-recurrence of sources. "

And he added: "The E-Library provides many sources as follows:

• 1- University theses: It is one of the contents that received high demand from the graduate students and preliminary studies, as there was a coordination with Iraqi universities to open a channel of cooperation and cultural exchange with the central libraries, bringing the electronic content of theses from these universities then work on sorting them and organizing them so that the researcher can make his research in an easy way. Noting that there is currently about 35838 theses in various scientific and humanitarian disciplines.
• 2- Arabic E-Books: There was a work to collect as many Arabic books as possible through internet, knowledge institutions and universities to provide them to the researchers.
• 3- Foreign E-Books: Due to the difficulty of obtaining foreign sources and their expensive prices, it was decided to work on this level with the help of university professors (as consultants), a list of important books that serve students in their preliminary and graduate studies was made, then the books were downloaded from Internet, or universities, then they were organized, catalogued and indexed according to the international standards based on the index of the Congress Library. The number of books in this library is 36709 titles.
• 4- Laser disks: There are thousands of the in various fields of knowledge, some of them are electronic libraries that enable the research in thousand books, and others include visual or audio lessons and explanations in religious and human disciplines and some scientific disciplines such as medicine, with a large body of general knowledge materials. In addition to magazines, research and articles that are available online."

As for the number of employees of the unit and the work mechanism, Mr. Ahmad has said: "The number of employees of the unit is of 12 working with a shift system, morning and evening. And we seek to expand the work to provide a greater service to the researchers and the students."