The University holds an Omani Libraries Symposium featuring the Sources of Information and Scientific Publications.

Rayyan Sultan Al Harthi

On Tuesday, under the auspices of  Prof. Mohammed Abdul Moniem, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University, the University of Nizwa Library, in cooperation with the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation and the Omani Association for Libraries and Information, organized a symposium featuring the sources of Information and Scientific publications.

The symposium covered four main agendas. During the first chapter, Hamad Nasser Al Badai, the Deputy Director for Technical Services from Sultan Qaboos University Library spoke of Academic libraries and the challenges the university faces in securing sources of information, he spoke of the selection and evaluation of publishers, the negotiation skills, the most important clauses in the subscription or purchase contacts, as well as the pricing challenges and ways to address them.

The Director of the Sohar University Library, Muhammad Al Araimi together with the librarian from the university, Noura Muhammad Al Raisiyya, then went on to highlight the course services with respect to academic libraries, explaining the idea of centralization or decentralization at the university level, going as far as detailing the mechanisms for providing the resources required.

Later, the Senior librarian at the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research, and Innovation, Munir Al Batashi, gave the third chapter featuring the unified subscription project, “Masadir,” where he spoke of the latest project developments, the challenges faced with the project, and the ways to address them, as well as the future vision for the project.

In the last chapter, after bringing to the audience’s awareness the importance of scientific publishing and public exposure, Dr. Ali Saif Al Awfi, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Future for Technology and Development, and a collaborating professor at the Sultan Qaboos University, went on to explain the terms and criteria for establishing scientific journals and the ways to adopt and classify scientific journals in Scopus.

This being the first of its kind at the University of Nizwa, the Omani Academic Libraries Symposium aims to strengthen the ties between the academic libraries within the Sultanate by providing an opportunity for the officials from the government and private sectors to meet and discuss important issues facing the libraries, and ways to tackle them at large.