English 
On Wednesday, 31 January 2024, Dr. Hesham Saeed, Vice President of Alexandria University for Graduate Studies and Research, inaugurated the activities of the second annual forum for digital library specialists at Alexandria University, under the title “Analysis of the Reality of the Digital Library Units at the University’s Faculties and Institutes for the year 2022/2023 and the Future Plan for the Coming Year,” which will be held over two days from January 31 to February 1, in order to make the most of the services of the digital library units at the libraries of the university’s faculties and institutes.
The opening session was attended by Dr. Ahmed Wahban, Dean of the Faculty of Economic Studies and Political Sciences, Dr. Sherine Adel Nosseir, Vice Dean for Postgraduate Studies and Research, Dr. Alaa Gaafar, Executive Director of the Digital Library Unit at Alexandria University, Faculties’ Vice Deans for Postgraduate Studies and Research, and the digital library specialists at the faculties and institutes of Alexandria University.
In his speech, Dr. Hesham Saeed emphasized that the digital library plays a vital role in supporting university education and scientific research and enhancing the development of knowledge and skills among students and researchers at Alexandria University. He added that the digital library has a positive impact on the learning and academic development process, as it allows easy access and permanent availability to research and academic information without the need to move to the actual library, in addition to providing a wide range of rich academic resources, which includes a huge collection of e-books, scientific articles, research and dissertations listed on databases, enabling the researcher to explore various topics. Saeed added that the role of digital libraries is not only limited to these services, but it extends to very important services such as the checking and examination service for plagiarism and academic citations, stressing that some other services will be introduced for which recommendations were issued by the Supreme Council for Postgraduate Studies and Research last month, such as the proofreading and linguistic revision service, which is an important factor in acceptance of scientific research into international journals with a high impact factor.
While Dr. Ahmed Wahban thanked those in charge of the digital library at Alexandria University for their continuous efforts to improve the digital library and serve the educational and research process at Alexandria University, hoping that this forum would be a good opportunity to communicate and learn about the various services of the university’s digital library.
Meanwhile, Dr. Alaa Gaafar reviewed the reality of the digital library units during the past year, through quality control and service development. She stressed that the digital library at Alexandria University seeks during the future period the necessity of launching the internal digital repository system IDAR for the digital library units of Alexandria University, to link the central unit with the sub-units in the university’s faculties and institutes, controlling the quality of bibliographic records on the EULC, converting all digital library transactions to the online system, completing the digitization of printed dissertations at the university in cooperation with the central library, and providing an internet subscription to the digital sub-library unit at each faculty or institute.
At the conclusion of the forum, Dr. Hesham Saeed honoured the best digital sub-libraries for the year 2023, in view of the effort and dedication they made last year to improve the digital library and serve the research process in their faculties.
