Qatar National Library

Qatar National Library (QNL) is a non-profit organization under the umbrella of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. The plans for the new national library were announced by Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of Qatar Foundation, on November 19, 2012, during a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Dar Al Kutub library, in Doha, Qatar, the first public library in the Persian Gulf region (founded on December 29, 1962), which had until then been regarded as the Qatari national library.

Claudia Lux, a German scholar and library professional, was appointed by the Qatar Foundation to be director of the library project in April 2012, and initially oversaw the launch of QNL as a digital library, while construction began on a new building in Education City, a district in Doha that was developed by the foundation as a center of higher education, and now includes branch campuses of six American universities, as well as other educational and research institutions.

The parent institution, Qatar Foundation – a private, chartered, non-profit organization, founded in 1995 by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, then emir of Qatar (now father emir) – aspires through its activities to "promot[e] a culture of excellence," to encourage "an innovative and open society in Qatar," and to support a transition "from a carbon-based economy to a knowledge-based economy." The new library is envisioned as playing an integral role in such a transition by providing the requisite educational resources to students, educators, researchers and the community at large; its mission is to "spread knowledge, nurture imagination, cultivate creativity, and preserve the nation’s heritage for future generations," or, in another formulation, to help in "bridging with knowledge Qatar’s and the Arab and Islamic world’s heritage and future."

QNL aims to serve a three-fold function as a national library, a research-level university library, and a central metropolitan public library equipped for the digital age. In its capacity as a national library it collects and provides access to global knowledge, including heritage content and materials relevant to Qatar and the region; as a university and research library it supports education and research at all levels; and as a modern central public library it provides library services and resources to meet the reading interests and foster the information literacy of the general public, and, with the opening of the new building, will also serve as a community meeting place.

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