Islamic Book and Information Culture: An Overview
Journal Title: Webology - Year 2007, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
This overview, the second article in an exploratory study of the information seeking (IS) behavior of a group of eighty-four reference librarians from Egypt and the USA, is intended to assist readers less familiar with Islamic history to better understand cross-cultural influences on Arab IS behavior. A description of pre-Islamic poetry and orality precedes a discussion of the importance of the Koran and Islamic traditions on the development of a religious, scribal society. Oral transmission of mysteries omitted from texts leads to procedures in establishing the authenticity of scholarly works, which result in high standards of manuscript production. Reasons for Muslim resistance to the printing press are discussed, followed by a chronicle of European invasions that eventually convince Islamic authorities of the need to adopt printing to resist colonial pressure. The early years of publishing see the emergence of distinct centers of publishing in Egypt and Lebanon, and reasons for the quick acceptance of lithography are examined. The acceptance of printing by Muslim clergy marks the beginning of religious publishing. The Arab Awakening is a movement to compel the general Arabic population to take notice of public dialogue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The role of printing in the age of self-rule leads to a discussion of current information dissemination in Arab countries. Memorization, orality, Arabic as a linguistic vehicle, illiteracy, and the Arabization of science are discussed as issues in the transmission of knowledge in the modern Middle East.
Authors and Affiliations
Paul L. Hover
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP687516
- DOI -
- Views 207
- Downloads 0
Information Ecology of Bioinformatic in Web of Science with Emphasizing on Articles Thematic Interaction
The present study aims to represent the infoecology of bioinformatics, with an emphasis on the topic of relationships between studies in order to provide a scientific framework for infoecological investigations in this f...
Information Society: Analyzing Problems and Prospects of Using Information Technologies, Computers and Communication Networks
The study is devoted to actual issues of using information technologies, computers and communication networks by the Russian citizens and companies. World experience shows that the competitiveness of the national economy...
The Turn: Integration of Information Seeking and Retrieval in Context.
In July 2004, I was one of the participants at the Workshop on Information Retrieval in Context (IRiX) which was held in conjunction with SIGIR conference. The workshop was very encouraging for me because I realized rese...
Editorial Science Popularization through Open Access
The science plays a crucial role in the modern society, and the popularization of science in its electronic form is closely related to the rise and development of the World Wide Web. Since 1990s -the introduction of the...
Students' sense of self-efficacy in searching information from the Web: A PLS approach
The role of self-efficacy in different task and organizational settings has largely been highlighted, especially in searching for information by web users. The current research was conducted to reemphasize the mentioned...